“The game had to be played the same way every day or the pieces would fall to the floor, the board would collapse, and the illusion that you were shaping your own life, that you were in control, would break.”

“Were board games named board games because most of the time you played them when you were bored? Hmm.”

“Can you imagine what it would be like to know that your life was just going to be a series of days that were all the same, that were do-overs?”

“It was all so meaningless when I looked at it that way. It was meaningless in the same way as when I stood up from a game and then looked down on the scatter of playing pieces, and realized that they all were just bits of polished stone on a wooden board marked with squares. All the meaning they'd had moments before when I'd been trying to win a game were meanings that I'd imbued them with. Of themselves, neither they nor the board had any significance.”

“I’ve never felt so heartbroken and so in love at the same time. If you would’ve told me the day we met that you were going to break my heart— and that days, months, or even years would pass, that I would still be hurting like this—it wouldn’t have stopped me from falling in love with you.”

“If you were to live your life like a prayer, every action a sort of prayer, it would be easy to believe that all your thoughts were the words of God. Perhaps they would be.”