“I promise that this will be the last time you’ll see me. I won’t come back. I won’t put you through anything like this again. You can go on with your life without any more interference from me. It will be as if I never existed.”
This quote, from when Edward tells Bella that he is leaving, drives much of the novel. Bella claims that Edward’s promise, that Bella’s life will go on as if he never existed, was broken as soon as he made it. For this, Bella decides to break her promise, not to be reckless, by asking Jacob to teach her to ride a motorcycle. This sparks a friendship between Bella and Jacob which endures throughout the novel.
“Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second-hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but passes it does. Even for me.”
This quote concludes Bella’s four-month haze. It recognizes that though in extreme pain, life went on for Bella. Edward broke her heart when he left her, but somehow, in some way she can’t quite explain, four months passed. They were four months filled with pain and sorrow, but they passed nonetheless.
“Even more, I had never meant to love him. One thing I truly knew – knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest – was how love gave someone the power to break you.”
Here, Bella admits that she loves Jacob. Though she does not love him romantically the way she loves Edward, she loves him more than just as a friend. This quote foreshadows the complications Jacob’s life as a werewolf will cause. Since werewolves and vampires are natural enemies, Bella will feel stuck in the middle, forced to choose between them. Jacob will not be able to be friends with Bella as long as she is friends with vampires. Loving Jacob now will make losing Jacob as a friend later more painful.
“I shook my head sadly. Love is irrational, I reminded myself. The more you loved someone, the less sense anything made.”
Here, Bella grapples with one of the consequences of loving someone: you often turn a blind eye to his or her faults. She still wants to be friends with Jacob, though he is probably one of the ones killing people in the forest. She will try to find some kind of compromise, so she doesn’t losing him as a friend, though she might have to turn a blind eye to some of his actions. She thinks of Edward, who did not kill people, but potentially could have. She wonders if she still would have been in love with him if he was a murderer. She thinks that she probably would have, which saddens and confuses her.
