“I always liked routine. I suppose I never found boredom very boring. I doubted I could explain it to someone like Margo but drawing circles through life struck me as a kind of reasonable insanity.”

“Drawing circles through life struck me as a kind of reasonable insanity.”

“I had always liked that: I liked routine. I liked being bored. I didn’t want to, but I did.”

“My days had a pleasant identicalness about them. I had always liked that: I liked routine. I liked being bored. I didn’t want to but I did.”

“And all at once I knew how Margo Roth Spiegelman felt when she wasn't being Margo Roth Spiegelman: she felt empty. She felt the unscaleable wall surrounding her. I thought of her asleep on the carpet with only that jagged sliver of sky above her. Maybe Margo felt comfortable there because Margo the person lived like that all the time: in an abandoned room with blocked-out windows, the only light pouring in through holes in the roof. Yes. The fundamental mistake I had always made—and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make—was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.”

“Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.”

“That doesn't sound like my Margo", she said, and I thought of my Margo, and all of us looking at her reflection in different funhouse mirrors.”