A veces los libros no nos encuentran hasta que llega el momento adecuado.
She is thirty-one years old and she thinks she should have met someone by now.
Twenty years ago, when she first started doing Survivor Day, it was easy, she says, but now, who’s left? Maybe you survive cancer, maybe you survive the Holocaust, but life’ll get you every time.
He pats you on the shoulder. “We’re lucky,” he said. “We got to have this time, and we didn’t ruin anyone’s life in the process. It doesn’t feel like it right now, but one day, you’ll look back and think this was a very good outcome.” An outcome, you think. When I was young, I had this affair, and wow, what an outcome!
In high school, you read The Scarlet Letter, and it occurs to you that this is what the Internet is like.
What do you like?” she asks. “Everything else,” he says. “I will also admit to an occasional weakness for short-story collections. Customers never want to buy them though.
Infinite Jest is a masterpiece,” Harvey had said. “Infinite Jest is an endurance contest.
Que algo sea bueno o aceptado universalmente no es motivo suficiente para rechazarlo.
You try not to consider what it means that you are watching romantic comedies for occupational advice.
Well, I’m warning you. I could be a bad book with a good jacket.
Where is room for love? All you have is fear and a to-do list.
Yes, I read it,” she replies. “I most certainly did read it. It kept me up all night, I was so angry with it. At this stage of my life, I would rather not be kept up all night. Nor do I wish to have my tears jerked at the rate at which this novel jerked them. The next time you recommend a book to me, I hope you’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Fikry.” “I will,” he says. “And I do apologize, Mrs. Cumberbatch. Most of our customers have rather liked The Book Thief.
No doubt, you are doomed to love again.” “Doomed? That’s an awful thing to say.” “Doomed, blessed. It’s only your perspective.
They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books? Knife. Flatten. Stack. And how rare is it to find someone who shares your tastes?
We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone. My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart. We are not quite novels. The analogy he is looking for is almost there. We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that. In the end, we are collected works.
So I will wait, because I would rather wait for you than waste my time with someone who isn’t you.
She never says she loves a book if she doesn’t.
As a form, the picture book has a similar elegance to the short story.
It’s crazy,” she said. “What is?” The connections, she thought. Or the lack of them. The discontinuity. How it was impossible to understand how a person got from point a to point b, even if you were that person and you had been there for every, every step. How there were unseen and mysterious forces beyond yourself.
Endings can be happy or sad, I don’t care anymore as long as it’s earned.