She stands up and walks over to the window. "Do you want the blinds raised or lowered? Raised, we get a spot of natural light and the lovely view of the children’s hospital across the way. Lowered, you can enjoy my deathly pallor under the fluorescent lights. It’s up to you."
"Raised," A.J. says. "I want to remember you at your best." - P241
This is what life had been like before Maya and before Amelia. A man is not his own island. Or at least a man is not optimally his own island. - P245
He finds that he can’t stay awake to read an entire novel. Short stories are better. He has always preferred short stories anyway. As he is reading, he finds that he wants to make a new list of short stories for Maya. She is going to be a writer, he knows. He is not a writer, but he has thoughts about the profession, and he wants to tell her those things. Maya, novels certainly have their charms, but the most elegant creation in the prose universe is a short story. Master the short story and you’ll have mastered the world, he thinks just before he drifts off to sleep. I should write this down, he thinks. He reaches for a pen, but there isn’t one anywhere near the toilet bowl he is resting against. - P245
The answer is this: Your dad relates to the characters. It has meaning to me. And the longer I do this (bookselling, yes, of course, but also living if that isn’t too awfully sentimental), the more I believe that this is what the point of it all is. To connect, my dear little nerd. Only connect.
—A.J.F. - P249
We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We
read and we are not alone. We are not alone.
My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my
heart.
We are not quite novels.
The analogy he is looking for is almost there.
We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to
that.
In the end, we are collected works.
He has read enough to know there are no collections where each story is perfect. Some hits. Some misses. If you’re lucky, a standout. And in the end, people only really remember the standouts anyway, and they don’t remember those for very long.
No, not very long. - P249
Yes, Dad. Dad is what I am. Dad is what I became. The father of Maya. Maya’s dad. Dad. What a word. What a little big word. What a word and what a world! He is crying. His heart is too full, and no words to release it. I know what words do, he thinks. They let us feel less. - P250
Reading has become difficult. If he tries very hard, he can still make itthrough a short story. Novels have become impossible. He can write more easily than he can speak. Not that writing is easy. He writes a paragraph a day. A paragraph for Maya. It isn’t much, but it’s what he has left to give.
He wants to tell her something very important. - P250
Not of dying, he thinks, but a little of this part I’m in. Every day, there is less of me. Today I am thoughts without words. Tomorrow I will be a body without thoughts. And so it goes. But Maya, you are here right now and so I am glad to be here. Even without books and words. Even without my mind. How the hell do you say this? How do you even begin? - P250
"Maya, we are what we love. We are that we love." - P250
"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." - P250
He nods, and she takes his hands in hers. His hands had been cold, and now they are warm, and he decides that he’s gotten close enough for today. Tomorrow, maybe, he will find the words. - P251
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