More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
We’d had versions of this fight before, where Ro whined about how materialistic I was becoming and how everything shouldn’t be about a person’s wealth or social status. Of course Ro had to think that way, because she was poor.
“Why are you showing me this?” I asked the Ghost. “I told you, these are just the shadows of things that have been,” said the Ghost. “If you don’t like them, don’t blame me.”
That’s how it felt like love should be—inevitable. Irresistible. Written in the stars.
“What about Canada?” she asked. “Who does Canada?” “I don’t think there’s ever been a Scrooge in Canada,” I answered. “At least, not that I’ve heard of.” “No Scrooge in Canada, eh?”
It didn’t matter if a person loved or hated Christmas (and I for one still hated it); their emotions always ran deeper that time of year.
She was ugly by the end. It was the thing that made her the angriest, I think—the cancer stealing her beauty. It wasn’t enough that she had to suffer so much and die so young. She had to die ugly, too.
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.
There’s nothing like being surrounded by couples to call attention to the fact that you’re alone.
“He’d ask me about the things I read, too,” Ro said. “Later, there was a period at the end of high school when he became a bit of a shut-in. I’d go and visit him, and we’d have these amazing conversations. About philosophy. Religion. Art. Once he said something about the nature of stories that I never forgot. He said, 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.
Sometimes, in this un-life I lived now, I forgot about the way food can comfort you, the way the world seems like it can’t be that bad if it can afford you this simple pleasure.
“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.”
“How does that even work?” I shrugged. “Something about wormholes and interdimensional planes. I don’t do the science. I just play the part. If you want to know how it works, you’ll have to ask Grant. And then have a degree in quantum mechanics.”
Good way to write future type tech that isn’t real.
“It’s about family,” I said to answer his question. “It’s about how, even when we know it’s a mistake or that things are going to end badly, we still choose to fight for the people we love.”
My fortune read, It’s never too late to become what one could have been.
“Nobody’s perfect, right? We can work on our flaws together. We learn. We grow. Maybe instead of growing apart, this time we can grow together.”
“A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self,”
“Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.”
It’s a wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”
And if you’re wondering if I changed—if I really and truly became a better person than I was in the beginning—I’ll tell you that I have good days and bad ones, of course, like everybody else, but I’m growing. I’ll get there.
But love doesn’t always have to be about the happy ending. Love can be about beginnings, too.
