Quotes from Gabrielle Zevin

Retrospectively, he realized that he had made a grave miscalculation when he had ended the friendship with Sadie. His mistake had been in thinking the world would be filled with Sadie Greens, people like her. It was not.

No. It's very simple. I want to make something that will make people happy.

He missed Sadie more than he had missed her in the years he hadn't spoken to her, because there she was, every day. It looked like Sadie and it spoke like Sadie, but somehow it was no longer Sadie.

isn't a sadness, but a joy, that we don't do the same things for the length of our lives.

He was like a bright, warm light over everything in her life.

the college had proven especially disappointing on this front. There were smart people, yes. There were people with whom you might have a decent conversation for twenty minutes. But to find someone who you wanted to talk to for 609 hours—that was rare.

Samson, you are a lucky boy,' Don Hyun said to Sam in a perfectly clear voice. 'You have had tragedy, yes, but you have had many good friends as well.

I was fully devoted to it, and now I'm not. I think if I'd become a professional, I would likely have fallen out of love with it anyway. It isn't a sadness, but a joy, that we don't do the same things for the length of our lives.

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." "I

Promise me you'll always forgive me, and I promise I'll always forgive you.

Sadie knew she didn't want to make a shooter, though, again, that was what tended to be popular. (She would never want to make a shooter—she, Dov's student to her core, found them disgusting, immoral, and the disease of an immature society;

It occurred to Sadie: She had thought after Ichigo that she would never fail again. She had thought she arrived. But life was always arriving. There was always another gate to pass through. (Until, of course, there wasn't.)

Sadie knew that the key to making a video game on limited resources was to make the limitations part of the style.

And to see her almost made him want to cry. It was as if she were a mathematical proof that had eluded him for many years, but all at once, with fresh, well-rested eyes, the proof had a completely obvious solution. There's Sadie, he thought. Yes.

Maybe I'll even become a nun and swear off boys forever." Scarlet turned to study me. "No. Your face wouldn't be good in a habit.

A maze," he would say, "is a video game distilled to its purest form.

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

The words of Anders Larsson came back to him: "To be good at something is not quite the same as loving it.

There is a time for any fledgling artist where one's taste exceeds one's abilities.

On the third day, he brought a library copy of the novel Galatea 2.2, which he had recently enjoyed.

what was the difference in the end? It was never worth worrying about someone you didn't love. And it wasn't love if you didn't worry.

he had learned to tolerate the sometimes-painful present by living in the future.

Never use someone else's engine, if you can help it," Dov warned. "You cede too much power to them.

Promise me you'll always forgive me, and I promise I'll always forgive you." These, of course, are the kinds of vows young people feel comfortable making when they have no idea what life has in store for them.