The marks humans leave are too often scars.

You can't just make me different, and the leave. Because I was fine before.

It's nice to have people who will feel guilty for you.

…God, it’s over. Takumi, you gotta stop stealing other people’s problems and get some of your own.

To find Margo Roth Spiegelman, you must become Margo Roth Spiegelman. And I had done many of the things she might have done: I had engineered a most unlikely prom coupling. I had quieted the hounds of caste warfare. I had come to feel comfortable inside the rat-infested haunted house where she did her best thinking. I had seen. I had listened. But I could not yet become the wounded person.

It's more impressive," I said out loud. "From a distance, I mean. You can't see the wear on things, you know? You can't see the rust or the weeds or the paint cracking. You see the place as someone once imagined it.

Destiny is not something that happens all at once-it's something that happens only in retrospect.