Life is never easy so that is why I never lie about my age. I want credit for every damned year.

Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity.

...some people coddle their own afflictions the way others spoil small pedigreed dogs with cans of pate.

Notoriety is cheap. It's just easier to get noticed by doing something bad.

I seem to remember even from when I was very young that when you loved someone you also hated them for making you love them, since loving someone is so incredibly humiliating.

A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship, it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help.

I thought at the time that I couldn't be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that's a common conceit, that you've already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.