Everything All at Once

Buy yourself some books, Lottie. They help with everything. Books can make you live a thousand lifetimes, a thousand different lives. Books make you immortal.

The moment I started reading, I was no longer in my bedroom, no longer sad, no longer even myself.

What if time really exists, like - everything all at once, all at the same moment, every single moment happening at the same time, over and over, for all eternity. Simultaneously.

Books can make you live a thousand different lifetimes, a thousand different lives. Books can make you immortal.

There's always someone smarter than you ... The sooner you accept that, the sooner you stop trying to be right about everything.

I’m fine,” I said quickly, because we are taught as children that automatic response: I’m fine, when we are not. I’m fine, when we are anything but. I’m fine, when we can’t stop thinking about death, about dying, about ceasing to be.

Have you every had one of those days where you keep repeating in your head: This is important. Remember this. Remember all of this.

You understand that this pain is endless. And that in and of itself is a kind of comfort, because you have found your own eternity. - From the essay "How to say good-bye" by Abraham Reeves.

But I guess it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing in the world. Have you ever googled a blobfish?

The point is, I’m your brother, and I care about you a lot, and you can tell me things. I thought we had established that three years ago when you were getting bullied by that guy, that Jeremy guy, and I confronted him, and then he was like, ‘I just have crazy feelings for her, man!’ and I was like, ‘At no age—but especially not at your age—is it acceptable to show a girl you have feelings for her by bullying her. That contributes to a patriarchal society and reinforces archaic gender roles that nobody has time for anymore.’ And then he was like, ‘What does patriarchal mean?’ and I realized I had overestimated my audience. But remember how I had your back then? And I have your back now.

Alvin, you saved me," she reminded him. "Yes," he said, "but I lost them.

It is one thing to crawl into bed after a normal day, but it is another thing to crawl into bed after an adventure - that's the best kind of sleep, the still-excited, still-buzzing kind of sleep where dreams blur into reality and it's almost like the sleeping and waking worlds blur and become one.

(she’d worked at a juicery in town since she was fourteen, “Not because I think juice cleanses work, Lottie, but because everybody else does.”).

I felt like I was underwater again, and I couldn't figure out which way the surface was.