The Map That Leads to You

by J.P. Monninger

“A book is a companion, though. You can read it in a special place, like on a train to Amsterdam, then you carry it home and you chuck it on a shelf, and then years later you remember that feeling you had on the train when you were young. It’s like a little island in time. If you love the book, you can give it to someone else. And you can discover it over and over, and it’s like seeing an old friend. Can’t do that with a digital file.”

“What’s the opposite of a romantic? I’ve always wondered.” “An accountant, I guess. A person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Have you ever heard someone say that books are places we visit and that when we run into people who have read the books we have read, it’s the same as if we had traveled to the same locations? We know something about them because they have lived in the same worlds we have lived. We know what they live for.”

You said life happens here and now, and it’s a fool’s bargain to let something good go now in the hope of something better at a later date.

“We could fall in love this way, you know?” Jack asked.

If you’re going on a date, a fix up, would you rather be in the bar waiting for the guy to show up, or would you prefer to make an entrance, scan the diners and drinkers, trying to pick out the friend of a friend who is supposed to be cute?

This was the second thing I had buried, I realized, in less than a half year. That probably had some meaning, but I couldn’t divine what it might be. I