Quotes from Gabrielle Zevin

And what is love, in the end?" Alabaster said. "Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else's journey through

What suit jacket would say "supportive," "feminist," "unbroken," "optimistic"? What one effing suit jacket could possibly accomplish that?

and the fresh air that came in was so crisp and cool, it almost felt like a drug.

I've decided we're going to be great friends, by the way. Don't bother trying to resist me. I'll stalk you until you submit.

For Ms. Pac-Man, Anna thought, life was cheap and filled with second chances.

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.

It begins to seem to me that life is little more than a series of losses

Marx sat down next to Sam, and Sam handed him the keyboard so that he could play a round. Because SHOOT I could not SHOOT stop for SHOOT kindly An ink pot combusted on the screen, indicating that Marx, having shot the wrong phrase, had lost a life. "This is the most violent poetry game I've ever played," Marx said. "You've played other poetry games?" "Well, technically, no," Marx said. "Your friend's talented. And odd.

They were at that rare moment in a collaboration where they were consistently grokking, where consensus was reached quickly on almost everything.

Sadie laughed a bit to herself, thinking this was what it was like to play someone else's game: to have the illusion of choice, without actual choice.

There's no game without the NPCs," you tell him. "There's just some bullshit hero, wandering around with no one to talk to and nothing to do.

Sam had dark curly hair that he wore parted in the middle and bluntly cut, just above his shoulders. He wore cheap John Lennon–style wire-rimmed glasses and one of those rough hemp striped parkas that are sold in Mexico. His blue jeans were holey and faded to almost white, and he paired his Teva sandals with thick white athletic socks.

The alternative to appropriation is a world in which artists only reference their own cultures.…a world where white european people only make art about white european people.

There are no ghosts, but up here" --she gestured to her head-- "It's a haunted house.

We had so much freedom—creatively, technically. No one was watching us, and we weren't even watching ourselves. What we had was our impossibly high standards, and your completely theoretical conviction that we could make a great game.

In the fourth level, for example, Alice, after a major operation, becomes separated from her body, and she has to chase through the hospital to catch it, like Peter Pan and his shadow. This dissociation was something Sam had experienced many times—the feeling that your body, when it was sick, was no longer your own.

It is not possible to receive charity from a friend.

come on, sweetheart let's adore one another before there is no more of you and me. —RUMI

It is strange, you think, how much people hate going to doctors, but how much they love watching shows about doctors.

There would be leaves in the fall, and snow in the winter, and cherry blossoms in the spring. The world had always looked painfully beautiful to him when he was sick. It was only when he was alone and he couldn't participate in the business of living that he tended to notice how lovely being alive was.

Until Harvard, he had not realized that in America—and not just in its college theaters—there were only so many roles an Asian could play.

And what is love, in the end? Alabaster said. Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else's journey through life?

Yes, she loved him, but she also liked him. She liked herself when she was with him.

Throughout his life, Sam had hated being told to "fight," as if sickness were a character failing. Illness could not be defeated, no matter how hard you fought, and pain, once it had you in its grasp, was transformational