But most critically, sweet, never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better.

To be next to her was to have everything.

When you grow up--and from the look of things, you have awhile--but you learn things never go back to normal simply because everyone's sorry. Sorry is ridiculous.

There was quantum mechanics, string theory, and then there was the most mind-bending frontier of the natural world, women.

What you tend to find in the personal lives of brilliant men is devastation akin to a nuclear bomb going off.

It's funny how the night that changes your life forever starts out like all the others.

Dad's Theory of Arrogance--that everyone always assumes they're the Principal Character of Desire and/or Loathing in everybody else's Broadway Play.