Andrea

“The magazine had run an interview with a neuroscientist some years ago, a guy who studied the effects of music on the brain, and it had shown that the music one loved in one's youth imprinted on the brain, literally making its own dopamine pathways, which was why people were always dancing in grocery store aisles. They weren't just happy; they were actually high on their own brains. Maybe that was why opera had fewer fans than musical theater---almost no one started listening to opera when they were twelve. Everyone Annie knew would have agreed that music was integral to life and offered a transcendent release from one's otherwise terrestrial existence.”
― Emma Straub, American Fantasy

“What is a game?" Marx said. "It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Chona had never been one to play by the rules of American society. She did not experience the world as most people did. To her, the world was not a china closet where you admire this and don’t touch that. Rather, she saw it as a place where every act of living was a chance for tikkun olam, to improve the world. The tiny woman with the bad foot was all soul.”
― James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow