Which all goes to show that it is hard to hide how you feel, when mirrors are out there everywhere, just waiting to pounce.

I myself am opaque, for some reason. Their eyes cannot see me. Yes, that’s it: The world is autistic with respect to me.

I myself am opaque, for some reason. Their eyes cannot see me. Yes, that's it: The world is autistic with respect to me.

It turns out that home is not mostly a place. Home is someone putting her arms around you and saying the words your heart longs to hear: always and everywhere.

But you don't have to fit in to be okay. Believe me! I am the not-fitting-in world expert. I have not fit in in maybe five different countries so far. I am homelandless. I even make mistakes when I speak Bulgarian. But it's not big deal, not really. It's not the end of the world, right? It's okay.

Names are like codes, yes? Like magic codes. They have everything that ever happened to you squeezed tightly inside them.

First of all, people are always pretending to be what they are,” said his father. “That’s basically a philosophical question. Part of being something is pretending to be it.

Truth and fiction are tangled together in everything human beings do and in every story they tell. Whenever a book claims to be telling the truth, it is wise (as Noah’s mother says at one point) to keep asking questions.