The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel

“We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved.

We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone.

We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and again.

(the scent of balls of both varieties is still palpable)

No one will ever love me that much again.

The first way Maya approaches a book is to smell it.

the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.

the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives.

“We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on.”