“We're all born an empty page.”

“We can change so many times in our lives. We're born into a family, and it's the only life we can imagine, but it changes. Buildings collapse. Fires burn. And the next second we're someplace else entirely, going through different motions and trying to keep up with this new person we've become.”

“It's very early, still dark, but outside there's the warm smell of springtime, like things rotting and blooming in one stagnant mist. I realize now that I've always craved the brutality of it. Shoots forcing their way up from the earth, petals popping open.The start of life is always brutal, isn't it? We're born fighting.”

“When we're alive, life consumes us. But when we die, all of the color and the motion is gone so quickly, it's as though it can no longer stand to be wasted on us.”

“I was born into a world that was already dying; I belong to it.”

“He looks at me, and I don't know what he sees. I used to think it was Rose. But she's not here with us now, in this room. It's just him and me, and the books. I feel like our lives are in those books. I feel like all the words on the pages are for us.”

“Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.”