More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
come on, sweetheart let’s adore one another before there is no more of you and me. —RUMI
No Man Is an Island; Every Book Is a World
The difficulty of living alone is that any mess he makes he is forced to clean up himself. No, the real difficulty of living alone is that no one cares if you are upset. No one cares why a thirty-nine-year-old man has thrown a plastic tub of vindaloo across a room like a toddler.
Fucking love, he thinks. What a bother.
Maya wakes, feeling better. “Why are you crying?” “I was reading,” A.J. says.
“It is the secret fear that we are unlovable that isolates us,” the passage goes, “but it is only because we are isolated that we think we are unlovable. Someday, you do not know when, you will be driving down a road. And someday, you do not know when, he, or indeed she, will be there. You will be loved because for the first time in your life, you will truly not be alone. You will have chosen to not be alone.”
“What kind of books do you like?” “Oh, all kinds, but my favorite kind of book is the kind where a character has hardships but overcomes them in the end. I know life isn’t like that. Maybe that is why it is my favorite thing.”
“Pretty is not a good reason to court someone, you know. I have to tell that to my students all the time.” “This from the woman who doesn’t read the books with the ugly covers.” “Well, I’m warning you. I could be a bad book with a good jacket.”
“Don’t you ever get to the point where you expect the worst from people all the time?” Lambiase shakes his head. “No. I see good people just as much as I see bad ones.” “Yeah, name me some.” “People like you, my friend.”
