“Everybody has two almonds inside their head, stuck firmly on somewhere between the back of your ears and the back of your skull. In fact, they’re called “amygdalae,” derived from the Latin word for almond because their size and shape are exactly like one.
When you get stimulated by something outside your body, these almonds send signals into your brain. Depending on the type of stimulation, you’ll feel fear or anger, joy or sorrow.
But for some reason, my almonds don’t seem to work well. They don’t really light up when they are stimulated. So I don’t know why people laugh or cry. Joy, sorrow, love, fear—all these things are vague ideas to me. The words “emotion” and “empathy” are just meaningless letters in print.”

“People sometimes say how cool it’d be to be fearless, but they don’t know what they’re talking about. Fear is an instinctive defense mechanism necessary for survival. Not knowing fear doesn’t mean that you’re brave; it means you’re stupid enough to stay standing on the road when a car is charging toward you. ”

“Anything will lose its meaning if you repeat it often enough,” she said. “At first you feel you are getting the hang of it, but then as time goes by, you feel like the meaning’s changing and becoming tarnished. Then, finally, it gets lost. Completely fades to white.”
Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Lo, ve, Looo, veee, Love, LoveLo,-veLo,-veLo.
Eternity, Eternity, Eternity, Eter,-nity, Eeeter,-niiity.
Now the meanings were gone. Just like the inside of my head, which had been a blank slate from day one.”

“books were different. They had lots of blanks. Blanks between words and even between lines. I could squeeze myself in there and sit, or walk, or scribble down my thoughts. It didn’t matter if I had no idea what the words meant. Turning the pages was half the battle.”

“I’d chew on the letters, savor them, and spit them out with my voice. I’d do this again and again until I memorized all of them. Once you repeat the same word over and over, there comes a time when its meaning fades. Then at some point, letters go beyond letters, and words beyond words. ”

“love was an extreme idea. A word that seemed to force something undefinable into the prison of letters. ”