Gabrielle Zevin: Thing

“We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on”

“But I believe good things happen everyday. I believe good things happen even when bad things happen. And I believe on a happy day like today, we can still feel a little sad. And that's life, isn't it?”

“Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.”

“Most people's problems would be solved if they would only give more things a chance.”

“A question I've thought about a great deal is why it is so much easier to write about the things we dislike/hate/acknowledge to be flawed than the things we love.”

“It was odd to have something so personal out there in that way, but the good thing about art is that no one necessarily knows what you mean by it anyway.”

“Daddy always said you only explained things to the people that actually mattered.”

“And I was crying for gravity. It had sent me down the stairs, and I'd thought that meant something, but maybe it was just the direction that all things tend to flow.”

“I've been a police officer for twenty years now and I'll tell you, pretty much every bad thing is life is a result of bad timing, and every good thing is the result of good timing.”

“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?”

“Daddy always said the only thing worth begging for was your life, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe sometimes your love is a little bit worth begging for, too.”

“But I wondered if all this kissing was a bad habit with him and me. The thing we did with our mouths instead of talking.”

“I shouldn't have done that," I said.

That was when I kissed him again.

May God forgive me for this and all these things I've done.”