It hurts because it mattered.

People believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to.

We were very different, and we disagreed about a lot of things, but he was always so interesting, you know?

You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller, and that's the secret weapon of the bookstore - is that no algorithm will ever understand readers the way that other readers can understand readers.

He missed his imagined future.

As far as all of our identities are dependent on how other people imagine us we are all making ourselves and each other up all the time

Right, well, he'd been sick for a while and his nurse said to him, 'You seem to be feeling better this morning,' and Isben looked at her and said, 'On the contrary,' and then he died.