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Is a person just a pile of junk?
If you have to be dead, it is better to be somewhere, anywhere, than nowhere at all.
“No point in being sad that I can see. I can’t change anything.
It is what it is, and all the wondering in the world isn’t gonna change it.”
As Liz sees it, for the aged, death isn’t much different than retiring to Florida.
To Liz, the prospect of being dead seems terribly lonely.
The story of her life is short and pointless: There once was a girl who got hit by a car and died. The end.
but I can never bring myself to prune a rosebush or clip a bud. A flower’s life is short enough as it is.”
Liz sighs: you could drive yourself crazy with ifs.
“It doesn’t matter to me; your behavior only hurts yourself.”
“Young people tend to think they’re immortal. Many of them can’t conceive of themselves as dead,
People who are happy don’t need to ask themselves if they are happy or not, do they? They just are happy, she thinks.
In many ways, she had felt that she had been waiting for all the good things to happen: living alone, going to college, driving a car.
Until a week ago, Liz realizes, her life had been entirely without obstacle. It had been a happy, simple existence, and now it was over.
Liz finds um strangely appropriate. Um means nothing. Um is what you say while you’re thinking of what you’ll really say. Um suggests someone interrupted before they’d begun.
Liz shakes her head, vowing to omit um and all equally meaningless words (uh, like, huh, sorta, kinda, oh, hey, maybe) from her vocabulary.
“I wish I hadn’t cursed, though. I wasn’t raised that way, and now it’s on my permanent record.”
“I’ll try,” Liz says. “Well, I hope you’ll do better than that,”
Many people on Earth spend their whole lives dead,
“when chairs are uncomfortable, it’s usually a sign you’ve been sitting in them too long.”
“My advice to you is to stop being lonely and to stop hating it here.
“Oh, and be happy! It’s easier to be happy than to be sad. Being sad takes a lot of work. It’s exhausting.”
You’re always connected, you just don’t think about—
“They say a man should always be as honest as he can.”
“Lizzie, my love, there’s always a choice.”
there’s always a choice in situations where one has a choice, if that makes any sense.”
The only problem (as many before Liz have discovered) is that she has to keep telling more and more of them.
I was deciding whether I had enough time to turn around and go back for it, but I couldn’t make up my mind,
“Mom forgave you, you know. I mean, I was named after you, wasn’t I?” “Maybe. I think she just felt sad when I died.
Sexy Sadie, what
“You go to work”—Aldous pauses—“because you like it.
“Are you happy?” “No point in being sad,”
“I think you’re already on an adventure, and you don’t even know it,”
it probably wouldn’t be there when she went back for it. (It had never occurred to Liz that she might not be there.)
she had wanted to buy it herself. There was something more honest about it that way.
Besides, life is better with a little adventure.
that he is wearing sunglasses even though it is night.
Detective Owen Welles
mention that he wears his sunglasses at night.
It is much harder to die when one is in love.
“Even on Earth, it’s 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’s changed.”
I am like one of those people who spend all their lives watching TV instead of having real relationships.
“Right, a small, large dog.” Owen laughs, too. “And preferably a he.”
the decision is usually more the dog’s than the human’s.
Is it weird to like something and not even know why you like it?”
Why do two people ever fall in love? It’s a mystery.
“I’ve got a lot of plans for that next time.”
“but a person is only allowed to say one other person’s name that way, and you’re already taken. It’s a rule, you know.”
Why do two people ever fall in love? It’s a mystery.
love is when a person believes that there is someone or something they can’t possibly live without.
