Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings.

People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.

To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.

I will no longer take anyone's word for my experience.

The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.

If you really want to know something about solitude, become famous.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.