“It was time to let go of the mad desire to remember. It was time to start living whatever life would come. In the present, not the past.”

“I keep expecting to bump into you two on the road, but maybe the universe isn’t yet ready to handle you and me side by side again.”

“People go entire lives without figuring out exactly what they want from life. You already have it, and the future you and your dad have planned out for you in going to take it away from you.”

“Funny, how it took a little bit of pain to remember that certain parts of yourself were alive.”

“A native tongue, in my opinion, isn't the language spoken where you were born or the first language you learned; it's a language that makes you feel at home. It's a language that you don't command, but that commands you. And without it, you'd feel lost, unsure of how to express to the world everything you care enough to express.”

“The thing with thoughts is that they die, like everything else. But almost everything else leaves a trace behind, even if it's a tiny carcass, some proof that it existed. Unless thoughts are spoken or written or sung or acted upon, there's no evidence that they were ever there.”

“I hate technology. It provides so many different channels of loneliness. Every time you check your email and don’t see a new message, you know that, even though people have the ability to contact you at any time of the day from anywhere on the planet, no one is interested in doing so. Phones are constant reminders that 160 people you know fairly well have nothing to say to you most of the time.”

“I'm a pretty forgetful guy, but everything she says, I remember. I remember what colour her hair ribbon was when we met on the first day of fifth grade. I remember that she loves orchids because they look delicate but aren't, really. From a single postcard she sent me when traveling with her family two summers ago. I remember what my name looks like in her handwriting.”

“What if she was supposed to be a painter, but no one ever gave her a brush?”

“No sky Leila had seen before could compare to the beauty she was seeing above her. It didn't feel like some accident of nature but rather something that was purposefully unleashed on the world.”

“Then that's what the Northern Lights are. All the lives that we're not living.”