“Son, if there's on thing I know," and Colin thought about how old people always like to tell you the one thing they know, "it's that there's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.”

“It's that there's some people in this world who you can just love and love no matter what.”

“If there’s one thing I know, it’s that there’s some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.”

“There's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.”

“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 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 none." "Having the correct graph from the start proved not that the Theorem was accurate, but that there's a place in the brain for knowing what cannot be remembered.”

“That’s what I was thinking about before you came. I was thinking about your mattering business. I feel like, like, how you matter is defined by the things that matter to you. You matter as much as the things that matter to you do. And I got so backwards, trying to make myself matter to him. All this time, there were real things to care about: real, good people who care about me, and this place. It’s so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don’t even know why you need it; you just think you do.”“You don’t even know why you need to be world-famous; you just think you do.”

“You can say a lot of bad things about Tiny Cooper. I know, because I have said them. But for a guy who knows absolutely nothing about how to conduct his own relationships, Tiny Cooper is kind of brilliant when it comes to dealing with other people's heartbreak. Tiny is like some gigantic sponge soaking up the pain of lost love everywhere he goes.”