“Hearing about vacations is like hearing about dreams -- no one cares except the person who's experienced them.”

“You can't truly hate someone until you've cared about them. Until you've loved them.”

“Isn't that what your memory was about, Bria? Losing control?" I pause. "I never knew memories were about anything. Besides the obvious. You make them sound like dreams -- subject to interpretation.""I think the two are more related than we realize. It's all in how our minds frame them. How we decide what -- and how -- we remember.”

“But all that's hugely unlikely -- with the exception of mosquito bites and sunburn. And yet even experienced travelers are still afraid. "What everyone forgets -- even me -- is the people who actually live here. In places like Central America, I mean. Southeast Asia. India. Africa. Millions, even billions, of people, who live out their whole lives in these places -- the places so many people like us fear. Think about it: they ride chicken buses to work every day. Their clothes are always damp. Their whole lives, they never escape the dust and the heat. But they deal with all these discomforts. They have to."So why can't travelers? If we've got the means to get here, we owe it to the country we're visiting not to treat it like an amusement park, sanitized for our comfort. It's insulting to the people who live here. People just trying to have the best lives they can, with the hands they've been dealt.”

“My dad didn't find me - I found myself. So that's when I figured out that the only person who could take care of me was me.”

“A person's actions could be interpreted in a number of ways, depending on who was watching. Their viewpoints were simply skewed by their beliefs, their prejudices, and their private desires. Their personal kaleidoscopes. I couldn't judge them, of course. I was the same way.”

“They’re like the opposites poles of my personality. Mild-mannered, responsible Reese is who I used to be, while in-your-face Olivia’s who I want to be—with a few sharp edges dulled.”