You are what you are" "Which is what? I wondered

I have a curious background for someone who turns out to be a writer.

Ironic," Betty Lou said at last. "The cereus insists on sunlight---that's why it must be at the end of the yard. And yet it saves its flowers for the moon. The sun never sees what it fathers." It takes from the day," I said, "gives to the night.

I’m not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn. I outgrow it, I change it.

Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow. Do you know what you’re doing when you spend a moment wondering how things are going to turn out with Perry? You’re cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you’re stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today you wasted is gone forever. It’s now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you , but now you’ll never know.

He doesn't think. He just does. A nonthinking doer.

I had never realized how much I needed the attention of others to confirm my own presence.