Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia.

It seemed like forever ago, like we've had this brief but still infinite forever. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

Without pain, we couldn't know joy.

"Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will," she says. The sky is like a monochromatic contemporary painting, drawing me in with its illusion of depth, pulling me up. "Yeah, that's true," I say. But then after I think about it for a second, I add, "But then again, if you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all."

…because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’.

As I recall, you promised to CALL when you finished the book, not text.

All good American literature is always interested in people who are ambiguously heroic, like Gatsby.