“Maybe they would look at each other and feel some odd yearning, but neither of them would know why. They would want to stop, but they would be embarrassed, and neither would know what to say. They would go their separate ways. Who knew? Maybe that happened every day to people who'd once loved each other.”

“And both of them are crying then, caught again in the surprise of their grief. After a year of mourning, they know they will not die of it, but neither expects it to go away. Maybe neither of them would want it to go, because then what would be left?”

“If men knew each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.”

“If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.”

“...Maybe this was another reason why people read: not so that they would feel less lonely, but so that other people would think they looked less lonely with a book in their hands and therefore not pity them and leave them alone.”

“Here was a boy who liked flaws, who saw them not as failings but as strengths. Who knew such a person could exist, or what would have happened if we'd found each other under different circumstances? Maybe in a perfect world. But not in this one.”