Quotes from Gabrielle Zevin

When you have children, you'll never be able to worry about a friend as much again," Dov said. "I'm tired," Sadie said. "I should go." Sadie hung up the phone. She pulled Sam's blanket over her head, and then she went to sleep.

Your cousin Albert told me that, in business, they call this a pivot. But life is filled with them, too. The most successful people are also the most able to change their mindsets. You may not ever have a romantic relationship with Sadie, but you two will be friends for the rest of your lives, and that is something of equal or greater value, if you choose to see it that way.

I have a pain that exists only in my head," she said, once some of her vitality had been restored. "I have had it my whole life. But when I feel that pain, I am incapacitated by it, and I am certain that I can't go on.

Sam's heart swelled with love for Sadie. Why was it so hard for him to say he loved her even when she said it to him? He knew he loved her. People who felt far less for each other said "love" all the time, and it didn't mean a thing. And maybe that was the point. He more than loved Sadie Green. There needed to be another word for it.

The thing I find profoundly hopeful when I'm feeling despair is to imagine people playing, to believe that no matter how bad the world gets, there will always be players.

He had begun to suspect that while he had an obvious aptitude for math, he was not particularly inspired by it.

Maniac Mansion," Sadie said. "That's it. Of course, it's Maniac Mansion. God, we loved that game. I was thinking, we should make something set in a mansion sometime." "And each room is a time-travel portal." "Maybe all the people from all the different periods who ever lived there are there." "And they're not happy about it," Sadie said.

I forget how young you are. You're still at the age where you mistake your friends and your colleagues for family." "Yes, Dov," she said, trying to hide her irritation. "When you have children, you'll never be able to worry about a friend as much again," Dov said.

She had, he thought, one of the world's great laughs. The kind of laugh where a person didn't feel that he was being laughed at. The kind of laugh that was an invitation: I cordially invite you to join in this matter that I find amusing.

She could remember the sensation of flying through the air, which seemed to last an eternity. She could remember feeling reckless, happy, and doomed, all at the same time. She could remember thinking, I am above gravity.

anything was fixable if you took the time to figure out what was broken.

The idea of Solution was that if you asked questions and didn't keep mindlessly building widgets, your score would be lower, but you would find out you were working in a factory that supplied machine parts to the Third Reich. Once you had this information, you could potentially slow your output. You could make the bare number of parts required not to be detected by the Reich, or you could stop producing parts entirely.

Adults always thought they could fix children's problems.

At a certain age—in Sadie's case, thirty-four—there comes a time when life largely consists of having meals with old friends who are passing through town.

If you're always aiming for perfection, you won't make anything at all.

I didn't know how else to leave

In 2005, people from the U.S. sent, on average, four hundred sixty text messages a year. Texts were treated and written more like telegrams than like conversations. The brevity lent these early texts an almost poetry.

No, this is a great game. That's Cobainus. The eleven stars of Cobainus form a fuzzy grandma sweater," Marx said.

Marx was a prodigious reader, and he felt like Sadie might be the kind of book that one could read many times, and always come away with something new.

There are many challenges to long-distance running, but one of the greatest is the question of where to put one's house keys.

En stad är ingen stad utan en bokhandel (en variant ursprungligen från "Amerikanska gudar" av Neil Gaiman)

No one, not even the rain has such soft hands.

He had said it would be trouble if she came to his apartment, and still she had gone. If someone tells you there will be trouble, believe them.

Complete waste," she said. "Sorry, Sam. The universe tortured you because it could, because it will. The enormous polyhedral die in the sky was rolled, and it came up 'Torture Sam Masur.