For the record, everything new is not worse than everything old. - Gabrielle Zevin

In a way, whoever you know in a certain place defines that place for you.

Do you like Moby Dick?" he asks.

"I hate it," she says. "And I don't say that about many things. Teachers assign it, and parents are happy because their kids are reading something of 'quality.' But it's forcing kids to read books like that that make them think they hate reading.

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