“That spring, Amelia takes Maya to the drugstore and lets her choose any polish color she likes. "How do you pick?" Maya says. "Sometimes I ask myself how I'm feeling," Amelia says. "Sometimes I ask myself how I'd like to be feeling.”

“But now, at this moment, you can't hook your boat to mine, 'cause I'm liable to sink us both. (222)”

“I do not believe in God. I have no religion. But this to me is as close to a church as I have known in this life. It is a holy place. With bookstores like this, I feel confident in saying that there will be a book business for a very long time.”

“But I wondered if all this kissing was a bad habit with him and me. The thing we did with our mouths instead of talking.”

“Wounds are like water set to boil – they heal best left unwatched...”

“I know he's a good person. And he said he was sorry. And I love him. And when you love a person, you have to forgive him sometimes.”

“They should tell you when you’re born: have a suitcase heart, be ready to travel.”

“When I was in my twenties and broke, I'd buy books before food. A meal will sustain you for a few hours, a good book will sustain you for life.”

“It's a tragic fact to die in an accident”

“...an irresistible of why we read and why we love.We are not quite novels.We are not quite short stories.In the end, we are collected works.”

“There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know?”