Quotes from Gabrielle Zevin

The rub of the Choose Your Own Adventure stories is that if you don't make a few bad choices, the story will be terribly boring. If you do everything right and you're always good, the story will be very short.

What makes a person want to shiver in a train station for nothing more than the promise of a secret image? But then, what makes a person drive down an unmarked road in the middle of the night? Maybe it was the willingness to play that hinted at a tender, eternally newborn part in all humans. Maybe it was the willingness to play that kept one from despair.

He was skilled----at the end of the level, he could make Mario land at the top of the flagpole, something Sadie had never mastered. Although Sadie liked to be the player, there was a pleasure to watching someone who was a dexterous player---it was like watching a dance. He never looked over at her. He cleared the first boss battle, and the words BUT OUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE appeared on the screen.

Love me? You don't even know me," A.J. says. "Little girl, you shouldn't go throwing around your love so easily.

Methinks I have grown soft in my middle age. But me-also-thinks my latter-day reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives. Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life. —

But this was classic Sam—he had learned to tolerate the sometimes-painful present by living in the future.

Because the things we don't have are sadder than the things we have. Because the things we don't have exist in our imaginations, where they are perfect.

It's easier to be happy than to be sad. Being sad takes alot of work. It's exhausting

It occurred to Sadie: She had thought after Ichigo that she would never fail again. She had thought she had arrived. But life was always arriving.

A.J. has never changed a diaper in his life, though he is a modestly skilled gift wrapper.

Theo nodded slowly. "You love Balanchine chocolate like I love cacao." "I wouldn't say love , Theo." "No, you speak the truth. Love isn't right. It isn't right for me either. Sometimes I hate cacao." Theo looked at me. "You don't love Balanchine chocolate. You are Balanchine chocolate.

I accept your condemnation," I said.

Unfortunately, the human brain is every bit as closed a system as a Mac.

When you have children, you'll never be able to worry about a friend as much again," Dov said.

She was pretty and smart, which makes her death a tragedy. She was poor and black, which means people say they saw it coming.

The thing about Shakespeare is you can only read his books if someone is making you.

I've thought a lot about it. The truth is, sometimes too much can happen in a relationship, and then there's nothing anyone can do or say. It's broken.

All women are many women! I'm afraid you've never known very much about women.

She had resisted returning there because to return to one's hometown felt like surrender.

But the best parts of him were in his books. I suppose I could always read those if I missed him too much. I haven't wanted to read one yet, though.

art doesn't typically get made by happy people.

I do not believe in God. I have no religion. But this to me is as close to a church as I have known in this life. It is a holy place. With bookstores like this, I feel confident in saying that there will be a book business for a very long time.

E. A. Poe defines a short story as readable in a single sitting. I imagine a "single sitting" was longer back in his day. But I digress again.

You don't choose a book the book chooses you