"But the pleasure isn't owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you." - Philip Roth, The Human Stain

• .language (and the stories we tell with language) can be twisted and molded. Words are not static. Language shapes our memories, and it is also shaped by our memories.

But mothers lie. It's in the job description.

Prodigies can very quickly learn what other people have already figured out; geniuses discover that which no one has ever previously discovered. Progidies learn; geniuses do.

He liked all books, because he liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.

Democritus: "Everywhere man blames nature and fate, yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passions, his mistakes and weaknesses."

What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?

sillage, [French word for the smell the perfume left behind] the fruity sweet smell of its leaving.

myopia. He was nearsighted. The future lay before him, inevitable but invisible.

mysterium tremendum et fascinans - that stomach-flipping mix of awestruck fear and entrancing fascination.

• .the absence of her would hurt more that any breakup ever could.

So did Ovid matter because he was Ovid or because he lived in Ancient Rome?

'famous is the new popular.'

the truth should matter as much as the point

He wanted to draw out the moment before the moment - because as good as kissing feels, nothing feels as good as the anticipation of it.

You can love someone so much, he thought. But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.

• .there's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.

Do you wonder if people would like you more or less if they could see inside of you?..If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone, anyone, love me?

• .how you matter is defined by the things that matter to you. You matter as much as the things that matter to you do.

And he found himself thinking that maybe stories don't just make us matter to each other - maybe they're also the only way to the infinite mattering he'd been after for so long.

_I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter - maybe less than a lot, but always more than none.