As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.

Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.

It was psychological trick called empathic listening. You say what the person is feeling so they feel understood.

The world is not a wish-granting factory.

Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.

I hadn’t been in proper school in three years. My parents were my two best friends. My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed.

There is no Them. There are only facets of Us.