Mary

“The words you can’t find, you borrow.

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.

He has read enough to know there are no collections where each story is perfect. Some hits. Some misses. If you’re lucky, a standout. And in the end, people only really remember the standouts anyway, and they don’t remember those for very long.

No, not very long.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Enduring and forgiving are two different things. You must not forgive the cruelty of this world. It's our duty as human beings to be angry at injustice. But we must also endure it. Because someone must sever this chain of hatred.”
― Hiromu Arakawa, Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 18

“...men as steadfast and normal as the women were mercurial and strange. The men in their lives loved them the way astronomers loved stars, loved the promise of what they were, knowing there was something about them they would never truly understand.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost