“Isn't it also that on some fundamental level we find it difficult to understand that other people are human beings in the same way that we are? We idealize them as gods or dismiss them as animals.”

“We imagine people as animals or gods. -But she was just a person, a girl.”

“Maybe by imagining these futures we can make them real, and maybe not, but either way we must imagine them.”

“Life is a lot like pizza…But in fact, Hank, the fundamental thing that all critical reading does is reveal to us there are not easy definitions that distinguish us from them. Reading with an eye toward metaphor allows us to become the person we’re reading about while reading about them. That’s why there are symbols in books and why your English teacher deserves your attention. Ultimately it doesn’t matter if the author intended a symbol to be there because the job of reading is not to understand the author’s intent. The job of reading is to use stories as a way into other people as we see ourselves, and when we do that we can look out at the world and see a giant endless set of beautiful variations of pizzas; the whole world composed of billions of beautiful, delicious pizzas.”

“We can hear others, and we can travel with them without moving, and we can imagine them, and we are all connected one to the other by a crazy root system, like so many leaves of grass. But the game makes me wonder wheter we can really ever fully become another.”

“And maybe by imagining these futures we can make it real, and maybe not, but either way we must imagine them.”

“The idea is that for ten minutes, we forget that we have feelings. And we forget about protecting ourselves or other people and we just say the truth. For ten minutes. And then we can go back to being lame.”