Bravery and adventure! That's the ticket! Don't sit and gather moss. Get up, get out, do what you dream of doing, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, and you don't need to made that particular mistake again, but at least you won't get old wondering what if you had.

Your car, comfort though it be, this little den and dining room on wheels, is a prison that deadens your senses, and to feel wholly alive you must go for a walk.

I was afraid you had deceased,' he said. 'Or gotten engrossed in a long book.

Adolescence hits boys harder than it does girls. Girls bleed a little and their breasts pop out, big deal, but adolescence lands on a guy with both feet. . . . Your body is engulfed by chemicals of rage and despair, you pound, you shriek, you batter your head against the trees. You come away wounded, feeling that life is unknowable, can never be understood, only endured and sometimes cheated.

I have taken so many wrong turns and been so careless with precious things and managed to lose, or break, or leave out in the rain so much that I loved.

We thank you [the soldiers recently returned from the middle east] for your service.

... life itself is brief, and that is what charges the day with such ridiculous beauty.