There are normal hours, and then there are invalid hours, where time stalls and slips, where life---real life---seems to exist at one remove.

I just... want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in a red dress. Just for a few minutes more.

I thought, briefly, that I would never feel as intensely connected to the world, to another human being, as I did at that moment.

You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.

Somewhere in this world is a man who loves you, who understands how precious and clever and kind you are. A man who has always loved you and, to his detriment, suspects he always will.

Just hold on. Just for a minute." "Are you all right ?" I found my gaze dropping towards his chair, afraid some part of him was pinched, or trapped, that I had got something wrong. "I'm fine. I just...I don't want to go in just yet. I just want to sit and not have to think about...I just...want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in a red dress. Just for a few minutes more.

"You cut yourself off from all sorts of experiences because you tell yourself you are 'not that sort of person'" "But, I’m not." "How do you know? You’ve done nothing, been nowhere. How do you have the faintest idea what kind of person you are?"