“I stood there, shocked. I'd never hugged a perfect stranger before, but maybe this was how people in California did things.”

“Who says all the lines of love are supposed to match up? I'd never thought about it that way before - that maybe your perfect other wasn't everything you already were, but everything you were never going to be.”

“Maybe people are strangers because time makes them strangers, not because you don't know them, and people you've never met are strangers because you've spent so long not knowing them.”

“Poseidon held out his arms and gave me a hug. I realized, a little embarrassed, that I'd never actually hugged my dad before. He was warm—like a regular human—and he smelled of a salty beach and fresh sea air.”

“We could never go back to how things were on the day before 9/11, but maybe I could go back to who I was.”

“I do not like strangers because I do not like people I have never met before. They are hard to understand.”