Jennifer

“...she doesn't want to become the kind of person who thinks that good news can only come from calls one was already expecting and callers one already knows”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“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.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“How about I tell you what I don't like? I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn't be - basically gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful - nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mashups a la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and cross breeding rarely results in anything satisfying... I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred and fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and - I imagine this goes without saying - vampires.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“our love is proved when we love those who are not beautiful, who wound with word or deed. When we love not out of pity, or even for their sakes, but for our own. And here is the secret: they do not wound us, as Yaweh does not wound us. We wound ourselves by allowing the offense. And so Yaweh commands forgiveness for our own healing. Because in honoring ourselves—and others as ourselves—we please and honor Yaweh, who looks not on what a person does, but on the heart.” I”
― Tosca Lee, The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen