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 any… - Gabrielle Zevin

A truly magnificent thing about the way the brain was coded, Sam thought, was that it could say "Excuse me" while meaning "Screw you." Unless they were unreliable or clearly established as lunatics or scoundrels, characters in novels, movies, and games were meant to be taken at face value — the totality of what they did or what they said. But people — the ordinary, the decent and basically honest — couldn't get through the day without that one indispensable bit of programming that allowed you to say one thing and mean, feel, even do, another.

She had resisted returning there because to return to one's hometown felt like surrender.

No one actually needs another person or another person's love to survive. Love is when we have irrationally convinced ourselves that we do.