Love you madly, my sweet friend. Love you madly. The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase … - Gabrielle Zevin

But people — the ordinary, the decent and basically honest — couldn't get through the day without that one indispensable bit of programming that allowed you to say one thing and mean, feel, even do, another.

How do you get over a failure? I think you mean a public failure. Because we all fail in private. I failed with you, for example, but no one posted an online review about it, unless you did. I fail with my wife and with my son. I fail in my work every day, but I keep turning over the problems until I'm not failing anymore. But public failures are different, it's true. So, what do I do? she asked. You go back to work. You take advantage of the quiet time that a failure allows you. You remind yourself that no one is paying any attention to you and it's a perfect time for you to sit down in front of your computer and make another game. You try again. You fail better.

The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends, it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.