Quotes From "The Storied Life Of Aj Fikry" By Gabrielle Zevin

I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn't be–basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful–nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups à la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children's books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and– I imagine this goes without saying–vampires. Gabrielle Zevin

Why are you crying?"" I was reading. Gabrielle Zevin

Someday, you may think of marrying. Pick someone who thinks you're the only person in the room. Gabrielle Zevin

His heart is too full, and no words to release it. Gabrielle Zevin

Every word the right one and exactly where it should be. That's basically the highest compliment I can give. Gabrielle Zevin

The words you can't find, you borrow. Gabrielle Zevin

Every book is a world. Gabrielle Zevin

Despite the fact that he loves books and owns a bookstore, A.J. does not particularly care for writers. He finds them to be unkempt, narcissistic, silly, and generally unpleasant people. He tries to avoid the ones who've written books he loves for fear that they will ruin their books for him. Gabrielle Zevin

But I loved those books or at least that first one. And I felt somewhere down deep inside him the person who wrote it must be there. That you couldn't write such beautiful things and have such an ugly heart. But that is the truth. He was a beautiful writer and a terrible person. Gabrielle Zevin

That spring, Amelia takes Maya to the drugstore and lets her choose any polish color she likes. "How do you pick?" Maya says. "Sometimes I ask myself how I'm feeling, " Amelia says. "Sometimes I ask myself how I'd like to be feeling. Gabrielle Zevin

I do not believe in God. I have no religion. But this to me is as close to a church as I have known in this life. It is a holy place. With bookstores like this, I feel confident in saying that there will be a book business for a very long time. Gabrielle Zevin

You don't choose a book the book chooses you Gabrielle Zevin

She doesn't recognize the number–none of her friends use their phones as phones anymore. Gabrielle Zevin

The easiest way to get old is to be technologically behind... Gabrielle Zevin

The difficulty of living alone is that any mess he makes he is forced to clean up himself. No, the real difficulty of living alone is that no one cares if you are upset. Gabrielle Zevin

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. Gabrielle Zevin

No one will ever love me that much again. Gabrielle Zevin

A.J. watches Maya in her pink party dress, and he feels a vaguely familiar, slightly intolerable bubbling inside of him. He wants to laugh out loud or punch a wall. He feels drunk or at least carbonated. Insane. At first, he thinks this is happiness, but then he determines it's love. Fucking love, he thinks. What a bother. Gabrielle Zevin

There are many challenges to long distance running, but one of the greatest is the question of where to put on's house keys. Gabrielle Zevin