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61 " Symbols are for interpretation, not definition. "
― Erin Morgenstern , The Starless Sea
62 " I do not care for stars,” the traveler said. The merchant laughed. “Everyone wants the stars. Everyone wishes to grasp that which exists out of reach. To hold the extraordinary in their hands and keep the remarkable in their pockets. "
63 " We’re here to wander through other people’s stories, searching for our own. "
64 " Important things hurt sometimes. "
65 " They asked if I thought he would have done something - like jumped-off-a-bridge something - and I said I didn't think so, but I also think most of us are two steps away from jumping off something most of the time and you never know if the next day is going to push you in one way or another. "
66 " Their story is only just beginning. And no story ever truly ends as long as it is told. "
67 " But the story wanted an ending. Endings are what give stories meaning. "
68 " You want a place to be like it was in the book but it’s not a place in a book it’s just words. The place in your imagination is where you want to go and that place is imaginary. "
69 " ...each one's different. They have similar elements, though. All stories do, no matter what form they take. Something was, and then something changed. Change is what story is, after all. "
70 " Do you believe in the mystical, the fantastical, the improbable, or the impossible? Do you believe that things others dismiss as dreams and imagination actually exist? Do you believe in fairy tales? "
71 " This is what his mother would call a moment with meaning. A moment that changes the moments that follow. "
72 " The weather. It’s like a poem. Where each word is more than one thing at once and everything’s a metaphor. The meaning condensed into rhythm and sound and the spaces between sentences. It’s all intense and sharp, like the cold and the wind.” “You could just say it’s cold out.” “I could. "
73 " You are words on paper...Be careful what stories you tell yourself "
74 " I have literally always been the kid who believes in fairy tales but I didn’t know what to do because I wasn’t a kid, I was a twenty-something in a cocktail bar who never feels old enough to drink "
75 " I think people came here for the same reason we came here,” Dorian says. “In search of something. Even if we didn’t know what it was. Something more. Something to wonder at. Someplace to belong. We’re here to wander through other people’s stories, searching for our own. "
76 " He tells her how he worries that none of it means anything. That none of it is important. That who he is, or who he thinks he is, is just a collection of references to other people’s art and he is so focused on story and meaning and structure that he wants his world to have all of it neatly laid out and it never, ever does and he fears it never will. He tells her things he has never told anyone. "
77 " He has untangled himself from vines blossoming with story-filled flowers. He has traversed piles of abandoned teacups with text baked into their crackled glaze. He has walked through puddles of ink and left footprints that formed stories in his wake that he did not turn around to read. "
78 " I think the best stories feel like they’re still going, somewhere, out in story space. I remember wondering if this story was an analogy about people who stay in places or relationships or whatever situations longer than they should because they’re afraid of letting go or moving on or the unknown, or how people hold on to things because they miss what the thing was even if that isn’t what that same thing is now. "
79 " I love you but I will not sit here and wait for this story to change. I am going to make it change. "
80 " Reading a novel, he supposes, is like playing a game where all the choices have been made for you ahead of time by someone who is much better at this particular game. (Though he sometimes wishes choose-your-own-adventure novels would come back into fashion.) "