Almond

From what I understood, love was an extreme idea. A word that seemed to force something undefinable into the prison of letters. But the word was used so easily, so often. People spoke of love so casually, just to mean the slightest pleasure or thanks.

Books took me to places I could never go otherwise. They shared the confessions of people I'd never met and lives I'd never witnessed. The emotions I could never feel, and the events I hadn't experienced could all be found in those volumes.

Even though my brain was a mess, what kept my soul whole was the warmth of the hands holding mine on both sides

To borrow Granny’s description, a bookstore is a place densely populated with tens of thousands of authors, dead or living, residing side by side. But books are quiet. They remain dead silent until somebody flips open a page. Only then do they spill out their stories, calmly and thoroughly, just enough at a time for me to handle.

People shut their eyes to a distant tragedy saying there’s nothing they could do, yet they didn’t stand up for one happening nearby either because they’re too terrified. Most people could feel but didn’t act. They said they sympathized, but easily forgot. The way I see it, that was not real. I didn’t want to live like that.

But books were different. They had lots of blanks. Blanks between words and even between lines. I could squeeze myself in there and sit, or walk, or scribble down my thoughts. It didn’t matter if I had no idea what the words meant. Turning the pages was half the battle.

Lastly, and I know it sounds like an excuse, but neither you nor I nor anyone can ever really know whether a story is happy or tragic.

Maybe understanding a language is like understanding the expressions and emotions of other people.

What does love mean?” Mom asked mischievously. “To discover beauty.

I've decided to confront it. Confront whatever life throws at me, as I always have. However much I can feel, nothing more, nothing less.

There is no such person who can’t be saved. There are only people who give up on trying to save others. It’s

Once you repeat the same word over and over, there comes a time when its meaning fades.

People said there was no way to understand Gon. I didn’t agree with them. It’s just that nobody ever tried to see through him.

wanted to read between the lines. I wanted to be someone who truly understood the meaning of an author’s words. I wanted to know more people, to be able to engage in deep conversations, and to learn what it was to be human.

To be more specific, I felt connected to the smell of old books. The first time I smelled them, it was as if I’d encountered something I already knew.

Mom said everything was for my sake, calling it love. But to me, it seemed more like we were doing this out of her own desperation not to have a child that was different. Love, according to Mom’s actions, was nothing more than nagging about every little thing, with teary eyes, about how one should act such and such in this and that situation. If that was love, I’d rather neither give nor receive any. But of course, I didn’t say that out loud. That was all thanks to one of Mom’s codes of conduct—Too much honesty hurts others—which I had memorized over and over so that it was stuck in my brain.

Love is what makes a person human, as well as what makes a monster.

I had discovered that if I kept quiet when I was expected to get angry, it made me look patient. If I kept silent when I was supposed to laugh, it made me look more serious. And if I kept silent when I was expected to cry, it made me look strong.

...a bookstore is a place densely populated with tens of thousands of authors, dead or living, residing side by side.

Parents start out with grand expectations for their kids. But when things don't go as expected, they just want their kids to be ordinary, thinking it's simple. But son, being ordinary is the hardest thing to achieve,

You eventually just move on with your life. I'm sure others would go back to their normal lives too, eating and sleeping and all, although it may take them longer than me. Humans are designed to move on and keep on living after all.

Ordinary . . .” I mumbled. To be like others. To be ordinary without having experienced terrible ordeals. To go to school, graduate, and if lucky, go to college and get an okay job and meet a woman I like and get married and have kids . . . things like that. Put differently, to not stand out.

We have to be tougher in this tough world.

To be honest, I couldn’t have cared less. Whether I was normal or not made little to no difference. To me, it was as subtle as the differences in the nuance of the words.

Dora found beauty in everything. She found nature’s magnificent work and incredible symmetry in a turtle’s carapace, or a stork’s egg, or an autumn reed from a swamp. How wonderful, she would often say. I understood the meaning of the word, but I could never feel the splendor it carried.

It seemed to mean that there was more than one answer to everything. Maybe I didn’t need to stick to hard-and-fast rules of dialogue or behavior. Since everyone was different, my “odd reactions” could be normal to some people.

Anyway, this sounds cliche but you'll eventually meet the people who you're meant to meet, no matter what happens. Time will tell if your relationship with him is meant to be.

a bookstore is a place densely populated with tens of thousands of authors, dead or living, residing side by side. But books are quiet. They remain dead silent until somebody flips open a page. Only then so they spill out their stories, calmly and thoroughly, just enough at a time for me to handle.

So, I’m going to be stronger. In my own way. In the way that feels most natural to me. I like to win. If I can’t protect myself from being hurt, I’d rather hurt other people.