You could hold me and I could hold you. And it would be so peaceful. Completely peaceful. Like the feeling of sleep, but awake in it together.

That is, to me at least, one of the most helpful and useful things books do for us: They are generous enough to allow us to choose what matters to us.

We're not going to break anything. Don't think of it as breaking in to SeaWorld. Think of it as visiting SeaWorld in the middle of the night for free.

We're all just facilitators. The real business is done by readers.

Patients are almost always preceded by their parents, because no matter how fast an ambulance can drive, terrified parents can drive faster.

The nature of the labyrinth, I scribbled into my spiral notebook, and the way out of it. This teacher rocked. I hated discussion classes. I hated talking, and I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldn't sound dumb, and I hated how it was all just a game of trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear and then saying it. I'm in class, so teach me.

But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska's genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed