I learned to pick up each piece, one at a time, from my pile of potential matches and try to fit it from any angle into the socket, then discard it and move on. Each failure is meaningless. It's not me, it's the pieces, and I have to, absolutely must, try each and every piece every possible way until I find one that fits. They aren't failures, they're steps, small bits of progress.

It's taken me years of practice to learn how to act natural.

The time flies. The time flies feed on rotting clocks.

I learned to pick up each piece, one at a time, from my pile of potential matches and try to fit it from any angle into the socket, then discard it and move on. Each failure is meaningless. It's not me, it's the pieces, and I have to, absolutely must, try each and every piece every possible way until I find one that fits. They aren't failures, they're steps, small bits of progress.

When you could discern a real threat from everything else, it was called caution. When you couldn't, it was called paranoia. ... You cannot separate paranoia from knowledge. The more you know, the more possibilities you see. The more possibilities you see, the more possibilities someone else sees. The more "someones" there are, the more "they" there are. It's a matter of simple math before you realize that They might not like you.

A person’s life story is equal to what they have plus what they want most in the world, minus what they’re actually willing to sacrifice for it.

I do know that I fell in love with the moment of falling in love and I wanted to keep that moment alive forever, at the expense of all those moments to follow.