Gabrielle Zevin

Above all, mine is a love story. Unlike most love stories, this one involves chance, gravity, a dash of head trauma. It began with a coin toss. The coin came up tails. I was heads. Had it gone my way, there might not be a story at all. Just a chapter, or a sentence in a book whose greater theme had yet to be determined. Maybe this chapter would've had the faintest whisper of love about it. But maybe not. Sometimes, a girl needs to lose.

But I loved those books or at least that first one. And I felt somewhere down deep inside him the person who wrote it must be there. That you couldn't write such beautiful things and have such an ugly heart. But that is the truth. He was a beautiful writer and a terrible person.

Despite the fact that he loves books and owns a bookstore, A.J. does not particularly care for writers. He finds them to be unkempt, narcissistic, silly, and generally unpleasant people. He tries to avoid the ones who've written books he loves for fear that they will ruin their books for him.

Wounds are like water set to boil _ they heal best left unwatched...

Every book is a world.

That Woman is in love with her own grief.

It__ difficult to ever go back to the same places or people. You turn away, even for a moment, and when you turn back around, everything__ changed.

I know he's a good person. And he said he was sorry. And I love him. And when you love a person, you have to forgive him sometimes.

...an irresistible of why we read and why we love.We are not quite novels.We are not quite short stories.In the end, we are collected works.

The words you can't find, you borrow.

Every word the right one and exactly where it should be. That's basically the highest compliment I can give.

You forget all of it anyway. First, you forget everything you learned-the dates of the Hay-Herran Treaty and Pythagorean Theorem. You especially forget everything you didn't really learn, but just memorized the night before. You forget the names of all but one or two of your teachers, and eventually you'll forget those, too. You forget your junior class schedule and where you used to sit and your best friend's home phone number and the lyrics to that song you must have played a million times. For me, it was something by Simon & Garfunkel. Who knows what it will be for you? And eventually, but slowly, oh so slowly, you forget your humiliations-even the ones that seemed indelible just fade away. You forget who was cool and who was not, who was pretty, smart, athletic, and not. Who went to a good college. Who threw the best parties Who could get you pot. You forget all of them. Even the ones you said you loved, and even the ones you actually did. They're the last to go. And then once you've forgotten enough, you love someone else.

My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.

Since i couldn't remember the "real" first time i'd lost my virginity, this would have become my de facto first time. I wanted a better story then: I did it with this boy who i wasn't very into and who had mysterious Gaterade breath; in his room decorated with sports equipment; at least he was nice enough to provide condoms and get his ancient, horny dog to leave us along.

It was funny how dad was more honest in a book that anyone in the world could pick up and read than he could be talking to me. Or maybe it was sad. One or the other. Sometimes it__ hard to tell.

His heart is too full, and no words to release it.

They should tell you when you__e born: have a suitcase heart, be ready to travel.

But then again, maybe 'I will' is nicer. It has the future in it. 'I do' just has the present.