You could try and understand people, you could read books and understand words and concepts and ideas, but you could never understand enough or have enough knowledge to keep away the surprises that both fate and human beings had in store.

When you raise an animal, you live it like your own child.

Things that came apart could be put together again, but never exactly the same.

Stories took twists and turns down fairy-tale paths or down very human everyday ones. You think you’re at the end of the book, and it’s only the end of a chapter.

We hurt each other, is the point. Hurt, annoy, embarrass, but move on. People, it just doesn't work that way. Your own feelings get so complicated that you forget the ways another human being can be vulnerable. You spend a lot of energy protecting yourself. All those layers and motivations and feelings. You get hurt, you stay hurt sometimes. The hurt affects your ability to go forward. And words. All the words between us. Words can be permanent. Certain ones are impossible to forgive.

Anyway, madness and genius. They're the disturbed pals of the human condition. The Bonnie and Clyde, the Thelma and Louise, the baking soda and vinegar. Insanity just walks alongside the brilliant like some creepy, insistent shadow.

I don’t know why we do it. But sometimes we just swim straight for the net.