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This is what it’s like to die, I thought. This . . . nothingness.
That’s how it felt like love should be—inevitable. Irresistible. Written in the stars.
“Don’t use the word chick in reference to women, Marty. It makes you sound like a jackass.”
“I don’t think there’s ever been a Scrooge in Canada,” I answered.
Before, I was what you might call happy. After, it was like happy people became the enemy. Happy people were weak. They were clueless. They did stupid things like die on you.
It wouldn’t be hard to avoid becoming a bad person if your life had always been full of ice cream and apple pie.
Because I knew: You can try to keep the worst things down inside you. You can shove them away, not think about them, not deal. But they bubble up to the surface. They always do.
“Dyslexics of the world untie,”
Without stories, we’re all just lonely islands.”
“Stories let us see and hear and feel what someone else does,” she explained. “They build bridges to the other islands. That’s why stories are so important. They create true empathy.”
“I just think, we don’t get promised anything good in this life. Bad things happen all the time. They’re happening right now, somewhere out there. They’ll keep happening. Who knows? Maybe this moment, right here, is as good as I’m ever going to be.”
“Love can be an excellent motivator for change. Falling in love can help us to see the things in life that are truly important. It can make us want to be better people. It can teach us to sacrifice what is in our own best interest for the sake of someone else.
‘No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of it for anyone else’?”
“It’s all pointless, because God does not protect you,” he said. “He doesn’t intervene. For me it’s better to think he doesn’t exist than to believe that he’s up there, watching it all, and he never does anything to help us.”
vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess,”
It’s never too late to become what one could have been.
But love doesn’t always have to be about the happy ending. Love can be about beginnings, too.
