Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.

I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.

Ordinary imperfect people, always choose similarly imperfect people as friends.

I’ve had that kind of experience myself: I’m looking at a map and I see someplace that makes me think, ‘I absolutely have to go to this place, no matter what’. And most of the time, for some reason, the place is far away and hard to get to. I feel this overwhelming desire to know what kind of scenery the place has, or what people are doing there. It’s like measles - you can’t show other people exactly where the passion comes from. It’s curiosity in the purest sense. An inexplicable inspiration.

Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.

If she did experience sex-or something close to it-in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.

Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?