Gabrielle Zevin Quotes

On Earth, Liz was constantly occupied with studying and finding a college and a career and all those other things that the adults in her life deemed terribly important. Since she had died, everything she was doing on Earth had seemed entirely meaningless. From Liz's point of view, the question of what her life would be was now definitively answered. The story of her life is short and pointless: There once was a girl who got hit by a car and died. The end.

A place is not really a place without a bookstore.

The casualities seemed to go on and on. Just when I thought I was done losing her, I would find yet another way to love her all over again.

The most successful people are also the most able to change their mindsets.

Maya has chosen to be ring bearer because the job has more responsibility than flower girl. "If you lose a flower, you get another flower," Maya reasons. "If you lose the ring, everyone is sad forever. The ring bearer has much more power."

"You sound like Gollum," A.J. says.

"Who's Gollum?" Maya wants to know.

"Someone very nerdy that your father likes," Amelia says.

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...

To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt. It is the human equivalent of the dog rolling on its back — -I know you won't hurt me, even though you can. It is the dog putting its mouth around your hand and never biting down. To play requires trust and love. Many years later, as Sam would controversially say in an interview with the gaming website Kotaku, "There is no more intimate act than play, even sex." The internet responded: no one who had had good sex would ever say that, and there must be something seriously wrong with Sam.

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?

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.

Have a suitcase heart, be ready to travel.

Chocolate doesn't solve everything, Nana."
"It solves a whole heck of a lot, though.

E. A. Poe defines a short story as readable in a single sitting. I imagine a “single sitting” was longer back in his day. But I digress again.

No, I've been doing this myself forever. I could have gone in here myself, but my daddy doesn't want me to get raped. That happens all the time in bathrooms.

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

The difficulty of living alone is that any mess he makes he is forced to clean up himself.

No, the real difficulty of living alone is that no one cares if you are upset.