They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books? - Gabrielle Zevin

art doesn't typically get made by happy people.

I chanced upon "The Luck of Roaring Camp" again a couple of years ago and I cried so much you'll find that my Dover Thrift Edition is waterlogged. 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. 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.

Death is a state of mind — -many people on Earth spend their entire lives dead.