The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

by Gabrielle Zevin

“Sometimes books don’t find us until the right time.”

affianced

“No one travels without purpose.

“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.”

Someday, you may think of marrying. Pick someone who thinks you’re the only person in the room.

For the record, everything new is not worse than everything old.

she believes you try new things or you may as well die.

We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone. My life is in these books,

We are not quite novels.

We are not quite short stories.

In the end, we are collected works.

“We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on.”