Quotes from Gabrielle Zevin

Sam texted her. He was starting to resent the elliptical nature of texting Sadie, the way she could ignore half of what he said and, often, the important half.

She is no longer speaking. Clearly, some response is required

The problem with it is that gender exists," she said. "Differences exist, and the law must acknowledge that or the law isn't fair.

Maybe you survive cancer, maybe you survive the Holocaust, but life'll get you every time.

It's a fact, Maya. There are murdering kinds of pirates and researching kinds of pirates, and your daddy was the latter.

She loves quotation marks and peanut butter and words.

I'd argue that most people have terrible taste. When left to their own devices— literally their own devices—they read crap and they don't know the difference.

YOU CAN KIND of see them if you get on your tippy toes and look over the fence," A.J. says. "There, in the distance!" They had left Alice at seven that morning, taken the ferry to Hyannis, then driven two hours to Portsmouth only to discover that the Green Animals Topiary Garden is closed from November through May. A.J. finds that he cannot make eye contact with either his daughter or Lambiase. It is twenty-nine degrees, but shame is keeping him warm.

I suppose we drink and we smoke for the same reasons it is done elsewhere. We must fill our infinite days with something.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Johnny Got His Gun, A Farewell to Arms, A Prayer for Owen Meany, some years Wuthering Heights, Silas Marner, Their Eyes Were Watching God, or I Capture the Castle. Those books are like old friends. "When

Beauties" by Anton Chekhov, "The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J. D. Salinger, "Brownies" or "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" both by ZZ Packer, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" by Amy Hempel, "Fat" by Raymond Carver, "Indian Camp

For instance, your life is a lie, and she never lies. When she heard the story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, she barely understood it. "Of course he told the truth. The chopping down of a cherry tree would be a very big thing to cover up," she said.

1) all things were knowable by anyone, and (2) anything was fixable if you took the time to figure out what was broken. Sam believed these things as well.

A.J. decides to call Lambiase. He suggests frozen shrimp from Costco, which A.J. now recognizes as Lambiase's default party-throwing suggestion.

To take care of something is to love it.

I know what words do, he thinks. They let us feel less. "No

but I'm not sure I'm the intended audience.

Her voice sounds like a firefly looks on a summer night.

I didn't call you because I had met someone better, and when that didn't work out, I decided to give you a second chance. So don't be thinking you're superior. You've got a decent smile, I'll give you that, but your teeth are too big and so is your ass and you're not twenty-five anymore even if you drink like you are. You shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

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.

And as much as a person might try to shield herself from it, the possibility for the other outcome was always there. We are all living, at most, half of a life, she thought. There was the life you lived, which consisted of the choices you made. And then there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn't chosen

The real gift of the holiday season, A.J. thinks, is that it ends.

Sometimes, though, I get tired of learning lessons.

I was overweight when I was her age, and my mother discussed it exhaustively. And yes, as a result, I would say I am the proud owner of several complexes. But who isn't? When you think about it, isn't a person just a structure built in reaction to the landscape and the weather?