It felt like a small forever.

It's harder to pick and choose when you're dead. It's like a photograph, you know. It doesn't matter as much.

I personally have a great deal of respect for readers. I have a great deal of respect for the human race. I think most people can tell the difference between fiction and fact. I think that the action of writing about something does not condone it. The best thing I can ever hope to do is provide good questions, and I think I do that. I hope I do.

And, selfish and scared, I wonder how much more he has to give.

What do stars do? They shine.

She really was pretty, for a grown-up person, but when you are seven, beauty is an abstraction, not an imperative. I wonder what I would have done if she had smiled at me like that now: whether I would have handed my mind or my heart or my identify to her for the asking, as my father did.

You are young, and in love. Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.