“and because what we learn in the darkremains all our lives,a noise like the sea, displacing the day'spale knowledge,you'll come to yourselfin a glimmer of rainfall or frost,the burnt smell of autumn,a meeting of parallel lines,and know you were someone elsefor the longest time,pretending you knew where you were, like a diffident tourist,lost on the one main square, and afraid to enquire.”

“Suppose you're teaching math. You assume that parallel lines meet at infinity. You'll admit that adds up to something like transcendence.”

“Do you know what it's like to love someone so much, that you can't see yourself without picturing her? Or what it's like to touch someone, and feel like you've come home? What we had wasn't about sex, or about being with someone just to show off what you've got, the way it was for other kids our age. We were, well, meant to be together. Some people spend their whole lives looking for that one person. I was lucky enough to have her all along.”

“I don't know you very well, and i'm almost afraid to know you better. Maybe i love you because i don't know you. Maybe if i knew what you were really like and what you wanted out of life and what you think is important, I wouldn't care for you at all and that would be the end of this.”

“A library is a place where you learn what teachers were afraid to teach you.”

“You are all a lost generation," Gertrude Stein said to Hemingway. We weren't lost. We knew where we were, all right, but we wouldn't go home. Ours was the generation that stayed up all night.”