“95% of romantic stories end with partners committing to each other because everything after that is just the blank terrifying morass of adulthood. This monotonous grind in which the only real excitement in your life is occasionally finding a truly ripe avocado at the grocery store.”

“And he found himself thinking that maybe stories don't just make us matter to each other—maybe they're also the only way to the infinite mattering he'd been after for so long.”

“He found himself thinking that maybe stories don't just make us matter to each other - maybe they're also the only way to the infinite mattering he'd been after for so long.And Colin thought: Because like say I tell someone about my feral hog hunt. Even if it's a dumb story, telling it changes other people just the slightest little bit, just as living the story changes me. An infinitesimal change. And that infinitesimal change ripples outward - ever smaller but everlasting. I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter - maybe less than a lot, but always more than some.”

“Once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable. But there is all this time inbetween when the vessel cracks open and we finally fall apart. And its only in that time that we can really see one another, because we see out of ourselves, through the cracks, and into theirs. When did we see each other face to face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other.”

“Romantic behavior was basically monotonous and predictable, and that therefore one could write a fairly straightforward formula that would predict the collision course of any two people.”

“My head was level with hers as we stared at each other from opposite sides of the glass. I don't remember how it ended - if I went to bed or she did. In my memory, it doesn't end. We just stay there, looking at each other, forever.”

“I don't remember how it ended - if I went to bed or she did. In my memory, it doesn't end. We just stay there, looking at each other, forever.”