“Which got me to wondering whether it’s possible to learn how to be a person in a world where all the people are dead.”

“I did some research on this a couple years ago," Augustus continued. "I was wondering if everybody could be remembered. Like, if we got organized, and assigned a certain number of corpses to each living person, would there be enough living people to remember all the dead people?""And are there?" "Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead people. But we're disorganized mourners, so a lot of people end up remembering Shakespeare and no one ends up remembering the person he wrote Sonnet Fifty-five about”

“She cannot possibly be dead, people do not just die”

“Being a person, I had come torealize, is a communal activity. Dogs know how to be dogs. But peopledo not know how to be people unless and until they learn from otherpeople.”

“I wondered whether I could find a Great Perhaps here at all or whether I had made a grand miscalculation.”

“Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you?”

“And I wanted to know whether it is possible to live a hopeful life in a world riddled with ambiguity, whether we can find a way to go on even when we don't get answers to questions that haunt us”