Neither novels or their readers benefit from any attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.

That was part of her, and you used to know it. It's like now you only care about the Alaska you made up.

Dad had a sign of his own. MY BEAUTIFUL FAMILY, it read, and then underneath that (AND GUS).

Gratitude is the proper response for the absolute astonishment of getting to be alive, and aware, and an essential part of this crazy, sprawling story.

‎"I go to seek a Great Perhaps.

Truth defies simplicity.

Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.