This is what you do. You make a future for yourself out of the raw material at hand.

Accept that, like many men, you have a streak of the homoerotic in you. Why would you, why would anyone, want to be that straight?

I don't know if I can face this. You know. The party and the ceremony, and then the hour after that, and the hour after that." "You don't have to go to the party. You don't have to go to the ceremony. You don't have to do anything at all." "But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there's another. I'm so sick.

What do you do when you're no longer the hero of your own story?

The vestibule door opens onto a June morning so fine and scrubbed Classira pauses at the threshold as she would at the edge of a pool, watching the turquoise water lapping at the tiles, the liquid nets of sun wavering in the blue depths. As if standing at the edge of a pool she delays for a moment the plunge, the quick membrane of chill, the plain shock of immersion.

The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard.