Every time she kissed him, every time he opened his arms and she crawled into them, felt like a miracle. Coming to her made him feel perfectly welcom… - Celeste Ng

The photos stirred feelings she couldn't quite frame in words, and this, she decided, must mean they were true works of art. (p99)

ANGER IS FEAR’S BODYGUARD, a poster in the hospital had read (Chapter 9, p110)

Fiction says, I believe that this could happen. It is prospective, focused on possibilities. It opens us to the possible, the hypothetical, rather than binding us to the actual. And this, more than anything, is why true stories alone aren’t enough, why we should recognize fiction and read it, why fiction is valuable. Without fiction, we might end up like the woman on the bus, unable to muster interest in anything that isn’t a True Story, that doesn’t come with shocking photographs. We would have no what ifs, only what dids. We would have nothing but the actual. And if we believe only in the actual, how small our lives would be, how limited and mean our humanity, to demand proof before we believe or conceive of suffering, loss, or strangeness.