“I meant it when I said I didn’t believe in love at first sight. It takes time to really, truly fall for someone. Yet I believe in a moment. A moment when you glimpse the truth within someone, and they glimpse the truth within you. In that moment, you don’t belong to yourself any longer, not completely. Part of you belongs to him; part of him belongs to you. After that, you can’t take it back, no matter how much you want to, no matter how hard you try.”
“Every form of art is another way of seeing the world. Another perspective, another window. And science –that’s the most spectacular window of all. You can see the entire universe from there.”
“I would love you in any shape, in any world, with any past. Never doubt that.”
“Now I know that grief is a whetstone that sharpens all your love, all your happiest memories, into blades that tear you apart from within.”
“I fell in love with his unchanging soul.”
“Paul says, "If not for yourself, my lady, stay alive for me."
Our eyes meet.
His next words are a whisper. "I have no need for a world without you in it.”
“Now I know grief is a whetstone that sharpens all your love, all your happiest memories, into blades that tear you apart from within. Something has been torn out from inside me that will never be filled up, not ever, no matter how long I live. They say "time heals," but even now, less than a week after my father's death, I know that's a lie. What people really mean is that eventually you'll get used to the pain. You'll forget who you were without it; you'll forget what you looked like without your scars.”
“We can't begin to learn until we admit how much we don't know.”
“It's comfort enough to know that there are infinite worlds. Infinite possibilities. Now I know somewhere,somehow, Sophia and I had our chance”
“This, I think, is the boundary line of adulthood. Not the crap they claim it is- graduating from high school or losing your virginity or getting your first apartment or whatever. You cross the boundary the first time you're changed forever. You cross it the first time you know you can never go back.”
“I would love you in any shape, in any world, with any past.”
“They say “time heals,” but even now, I know that’s a lie. What people really mean is that eventually you’ll get used to the pain. You’ll forget who you were without it; you’ll forget what you looked like without your scars.”
“I see... the way you're always searching. How much you hate anything fake or phony. How you're older than your years, but still... playful, like a little girl. How you're always looking into people, or wondering what they see when they look back at you. Your eyes. It's all in the eyes.”
“I have no need for a world without you in it.”
“I can hardly bear to look at him; it's like staring into the brightness and warmth of the sun, knowing that it's burning you while understanding that it makes your whole life possible.”
“The most powerful presence in the room is his absence.”
“The memory stings -- and I hate that, I hate how all the good memories have turned into things that hurt -- but I need the pain.”
“Apparently, when people travel between dimensions, their physical forms are "no longer observable," which is a quantum mechanics thing, and explaining it involves this whole story about a cat that's in a box and is simultaneously alive and dead until you open the box, and it gets seriously complicated. Never ask a physicist about that cat.”
“I realize that this is what being a parent means—facing the most horrible thing that could ever happen to you and yet thinking only of how it will hurt your child.”
“Every form of art is another way of seeing the world. Another perspective, another window.”
“There are patterns within the dimensions,” Paul insisted, never looking up again. “Mathematical parallels. It’s plausible to hypothesize that these patterns will be reflected in events and people in each dimension. That people who have met in one quantum reality will be likely to meet in another. Certain things that happen will happen over and over, in different ways, but more often than you could explain by chance alone.”
“In other words,” I said, “you’re trying to prove the existence of fate.”
I was joking, but Paul nodded slowly, like I’d said something intelligent. “Yes. That’s it exactly.”
“Mathematical parallels. It's plausible to hypothesize that these patterns will be reflected in events and people in each dimension. That people who have met in one quantum reality will be likely to meet in another. Certain things that happen will happen over and over, in different ways, but more often than you could explain by chance alone.”
“Bath," I said, relishing the short A of my new accent. "Baaaath. Privacy. Aluminum. Laboratory. Tomato. Schhhhhedule."
The giggles come over me, and I stop right there, hand against my chest, trying to catch my breath. I know I'm laughing mostly because I refuse to give in and start crying. The grief for my father has nowhere to go and is twisting every other mood I have into knots. And... tomahhhhto. That's hilarious.”
“You are not my Marguerite. And yet—you are. This essential thing you share—your soul—that is what I love.” Paul’s smile is sadder and more beautiful than I have ever seen before. “I would love you in any shape, in any world, with any past. Never doubt that.”
“All I need here is you”
“The universe is in fact a multiverse.”
“If your mother had any idea we were talking about this, she'd skin me alive. I'm not being metaphorical about that. I think she could actually, literally skin me. She gets these wild eyes sometimes. There's Cossack blood in her; I'd bet anything.”
“Is he right, about my creating excitement where I can? Even being melodramatic?
You went on a half-baked vengeance quest against Paul using a totally untested experimental device, I think. He might possibly have a point.”
“Paul,” I murmur, “call me by my name.”
“You know I cannot.”
“Just once. Just once I want to hear you say my name.”
Paul brings his face close to mine, so close we are nearly touching. “Marguerite.”
And we are lost.”
“I told myself it didn’t matter if I never got to be with you. It was enough just to love you.”
“We, who live in the cities, see but a little farther than across the street. We spend our days looking at the work of our own and our neighbors' hands. Small wonder our lives have so little of God in them, when we come in touch with so little that God has made.”
“For Kim did nothing with an immense success.”
“The thought of my mother talking to me about sex makes me want to stab my eyes out with a fork, gouge even deeper and scramble my brains to prevent the conversation from ever happening.”
“The difference in Billy wasn’t what had happened to him, but what hadn’t. He had a life he hadn’t led, and he knew it. He just hoped nobody else noticed.”
“I wanted a do over. A time machine. That magic wand. But real life didn't have any easy outs, and very few happily-ever-afters. The real world was more like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, with most of the choices ripped out before you even opened the cover.”
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