“Sometimes I dream that I'm writing a memoir. A memoir would just be the thing to keep me in the hearts and memories of my adoring public.”

“But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.”

“In the beginning, she had hauted me, haunted my dreams, but even now, just weeks later, she was slipping away, falling apart in my memory and everyone else's, dying again.”

“If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone love me?”

“He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless. And as I walked back to give Takumi’s note to the Colonel, I saw that I would never know. I would never know her well enough to know her thoughts in those last minutes, would never know if she left us on purpose. But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.”

“I thought of the one thing about home that I missed, my dad's study with its built-in, floor-to-ceiling shelves sagging with thick biographies and the black leather chair that kept me just uncomfortable enough to keep from feeling sleepy as I read.”

“His memory is compromised,' Lidewij said. 'If only my memory would compromise,' Van Houten responded.”