"But each was the closest thing to a deserving recipient of love that the other would find. So they gave each other all of it. He scraped his knee and said, 'I too have fallen'. She spilled water on her pants so he wouldn't feel alone. He gave her that bead. She wore it. And when Yankel said he would die for Brod, he certainly meant it, but that thing he would die for was not Brod, exactly, but his love for her. And when she said, 'Father, I love you', she was neither naive nor dishonest, but the opposite: she was wise and truthful enough not to lie. They reciprocated the great and saving lie - that our love for things is greater than our love for our love for things - willfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life."

-Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer