I love that world more, I think, because it is perfectible. Because I have perfected it. The actual world is the random garbage fire it always is. Th… - Gabrielle Zevin

Memory, you realized long ago, is a game that a healthy-brained person can play all the time, and the game of memory is won or lost on one criterion: Do you leave the formation of memories to happenstance, or do you decide to remember?

In truth, she hadn't put much thought into whether she was happy before. She supposes that since she never thought about it, she must have been happy. People who are happy don't really need to ask themselves if they are happy or not, do they? They just are happy, she thinks.

In the end, the end of a life only matters to friends, family, and other folks you used to know. For everyone else, it's just another end.