Quotes from Gabrielle Zevin

Intimacy doesn't have all that much to do with backseats of cars. Real intimacy is brushing your teeth together.

You tell a kid he doesn't like to read, and he'll believe you

Wounds are like water set to boil – they heal best left unwatched...

I'm allergic to sad memories. It's the worst.

Let's stay young forever. Young, stupid, and pretty. Sounds like a plan, don't you think?

On Elsewhere we fool ourselves into thinking we know what will be just because we know the amount of time we have left. We know this, but we never really know what will be. We never know what will happen...

In my humble opinion, love is when a person believes that he, she or it can't live without some other he, she or it...I said believes. No one actually needs another person or another person's live to survive. Love, Lizzie, is when we have irrationally convinced ourselves that we do.

Did you know that there are over three hundred words for love in canine?

I don't want to die," A.J. says after a bit. "I just find it difficult to be here all the time.

I have so much paperwork. I'm afraid my paperwork has paperwork.

When I was in my twenties and broke, I'd buy books before food. A meal will sustain you for a few hours, a good book will sustain you for life.

The baby, a girl, is born at 6:24 a.m. She weighs six pounds, ten ounces. The mother takes the baby in her arms and asks her, "Who are you, my little one?" And in response, this baby, who is Liz and not Liz at the same time, laughs.

Long relationships might be richer, but relatively brief, relatively uncomplicated encounters with interesting people could be lovely as well. Every person you knew, every person you loved even, did not have to consume you for the time to have been worthwhile.

There is no purity to bearing pain alone.

There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know?

What are you reading?" Owen asks. "Charlotte's Web," Liz says. "It's really sad. One of the main characters just died." "You ought to read the book from end to beginning," Owen jokes. "That way, no one dies, and it's always a happy ending.

Sometimes things seem so unbearable in the middle of the night, don't they? In the middle of the night, we're all such children.

It's hard to believe. Where does the times go?' Betty sighs. 'I've always hated that phrase. It makes it would like time went on a holiday, and is expected back any day now. Time flies is another one I hate. Apparently, time does quite a bit of traveling, though.

But then again maybe "I will" is nicer. It has a future in it.

Have a suitcase heart, be ready to travel.

It's when you don't need something that you tend to lose it.

Betty inhales sharply, 'It's just I thought I had lost you forever.' Oh, Betty, don't you know there's no such thing as forever?

Saying you're through with romance is like saying you're done with living, Betty. Life is better with a little romance, you know.

A.J. nods out of politeness, but he doesn't believe in random acts. He is a reader, and what he believes in is narrative construction. If a gun appears in act one, that gun had better go off by act three.