We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the version of the world they really believed in.

Depression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It's always there, though.

It was possible to feel superior to other people and feel like a misfit at the same time.

What if you had faith and performed good works, what if you died and went to heaven, and what if all the people you met there were people you didn't like?

On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching.

Three times a day Petrovich showed up at the nurse's office for his injections, always using the hypodermic needle himself like the most craven of junkies, though after shooting up he would play the concert piano in the auditorium with astounding artistry, as though insulin were the elixir of genius.

She'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read.