Gabrielle Zevin - Elsewhere (2005)

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On Elsewhere we fool ourselves into thinking we know what will be just because we know the amount of time we have left. We know this, but we never really know what will be. We never know what will happen...

Gabrielle Zevin
In the end, the end of a life only matters to friends, family, and other folks you used to know. For everyone else, it's just another end.

Gabrielle Zevin
Saying you're through with romance is like saying you're done with living, Betty. Life is better with a little romance, you know.

Gabrielle Zevin
What are you reading?" Owen asks. "Charlotte's Web," Liz says. "It's really sad. One of the main characters just died." "You ought to read the book from end to beginning," Owen jokes. "That way, no one dies, and it's always a happy ending.

Gabrielle Zevin
Did you know that there are over three hundred words for love in canine?

Gabrielle Zevin
It's difficult to ever go back to the same places or people. You turn away, even for a moment, and when you turn back around, everything's changed.

Gabrielle Zevin
No one actually needs another person or another person's love to survive. Love is when we have irrationally convinced ourselves that we do.

Gabrielle Zevin
There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know?

Gabrielle Zevin
Well, for one, you have to remember not to scream. Once you have their attention, whispering is much more effective. Screaming ghosts scare people, you know

Gabrielle Zevin
I have so much paperwork. I'm afraid my paperwork has paperwork.

Gabrielle Zevin
And when she dreams, she dreams of a girl who was lost at sea but one day found the shore.

Gabrielle Zevin
If you are going to forgive a person, Liz decides, it is best to do it sooner rather than later. Later, Liz knows from experience, could be sooner than you thought.

Gabrielle Zevin
The baby, a girl, is born at 6:24 a.m. She weighs six pounds, ten ounces. The mother takes the baby in her arms and asks her, "Who are you, my little one?" And in response, this baby, who is Liz and not Liz at the same time, laughs.

Gabrielle Zevin
Intimacy doesn't have all that much to do with backseats of cars. Real intimacy is brushing your teeth together.

Gabrielle Zevin
A life isn't measured in hours and minutes. It's the quality, not the length.

Gabrielle Zevin
Liz looks at the tissue box, which is decorated with drawings of snowmen engaged in various holiday activities. One of the snowmen is happily placing a smiling rack of gingerbread men in an oven. Baking gingerbread men, or any cooking for that matter, is probably close to suicide for a snowman, Liz thinks. Why would a snowman voluntarily engage in an activity that would in all likelihood melt him? Can snowmen even eat? Liz glares at the box.

Gabrielle Zevin
There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backwards, she thinks. She had come to love this backward life. It was, after all, the only life she had.

Gabrielle Zevin