But have you ever overheard two women discussing men? Men are crude liars, comparing their drabs, but women - I'd rather have [an] anatomist dissect me alive than to listen to the things the ladies say about us when they think they are alone.

A good friend of my son's is a son to me.

Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which way was forward.

Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins.

Don't wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.

But pain seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?

Utterly bleak and black is not the sum of realism. All the other colors are real, too.