The past does not haunt us. We haunt the past. We allow our minds to focus in that direction. We open memories and examine them. We reexperience emotions we felt during the painful events we experienced because we are recalling them in as much detail as we can.

You deserve to need me, not to have me.

I gazed around the room and my eyes stopped dead on a little boy standing in the corner. This was a particularly eerie doll. Life-sized and blond-haired and blue-eyed. I saw a little Nazi boy, pockets probably stuffed with scissors and retractable blades. My grandfather on my mother's side was rumored to be half Jewish, which practically makes me Jerry Seinfeld's brother, and thus wary of blond German boys with their hands out of sight.

When you say, "I need more confidence," what you're really saying is, "I need those people over there to approve of me." That is the desire to control other people and what they think. The first person who figures out how to do this owns the world.

I read a lot of science books - I love cosmology, quantum theory, particle physics. So my idea of a great read would probably put you directly into a coma.

When I first thought of being a writer I had visions of stacks of books in stores with my name on them, that sort of thing. But I never imagined this would be the reaction.

I love you," she said, and I knew she meant it because she spoke the words from the heart at the center of her chest. This, at least, had not been left behind at the hospital.