“Our friendship is made up of these brief frenzied exchanges, but the quality of our conversation, for all its feverish outpouring, is genuine.”

“I later realized that this is my view of passion: It is rooted in genuine friendship. Chemistry may be two strangers exchanging smoldering looks—but passion has to be able to survive at least a twenty-minute conversation!”

“Reading is, at its best, not an escape; it is genuine experience. A novel is not a monologue, but a conversation, a collaboration between writer and reader, an invaluable exchange of human conditions.”

“What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.”

“And then he laughed. It was short and brief, but genuine and made the dimples stand out on his scruffy cheeks. It was the best sound I’d heard all year.”

“If it takes night to make day, pain to know pleasure, black to make white, then doesn't it stand to reason that the depth of our friendships could be measured by the quality of our enemies?”