“Music: what life, what living itself sounds like.”

“But what if music is what escapes when a heart breaks?”

“I always imagined music trapped inside my clarinet, not trapped inside of me. But what if music is what escapes when a heart breaks?”

“This is the secret I kept from you, Bails,from myself too:I think I liked that Mom was gone,that she could be anybody,anywhere,doing anything.I liked that she was our invention,a woman living on the last page of the storywith only what we imaginedspread out before her.I liked that she was ours, alone.”

“But then I think about my sister and what a shell-less turtle she was and how she wanted me to be one too. C'mon, Lennie, she used to say to me at least ten times a day. C'mon Len. And that makes me feel better, like it's her life rather than her death that is now teaching me how to be, who to be.”

“Life's a freaking mess. In fact, I'm going to tell Sarah we need to start a new philosophical movement: messessentialism instead of existentialism: For those who revel in the essential mess that is life. Because Gram's right, there's not one truth ever, just a bunch of stories, all going on at once, in our heads, in our hearts, all getting in the way of each other. It's all a beautiful calamitous mess. It's like the day Mr. James took us into the woods and cried triumphantly, "That's it! That's it!" to the dizzying cacophony of soloing instruments trying to make music together. That is it.”

“It's such a colossal effort not to be haunted by what's lost, but to be enchanted by what was.”