Sometimes it's moments like that, real complicated moments, absorbing moments, that make you realize that even hard times have things in them that make you feel alive. And then there's music, and girls, and drugs, and homeless people who've read Pauline Kael, and wah-wah pedals, and English potato chip flavors, and I haven't even read Martin Chuzzlewit yet... There's plenty out there.

Did I do and say these things? Yes, I did. Are there any mitigating circumstances? Not really, unless any circumstances {in other words, context) can be regarded as mitigating. And before you judge, although you have probably already done so, go away and write down the four worst things you have done to a partner, even if - especially if - your partner doesn't know about them. Don't dress things up, or try to explain them; just write them down, in a list, in the plainest language possible. Finished? Ok, so who's the arsehole now?

I'm not telling you that suicidal people aren't so far away from people who can get by; I'm telling you that people who can get by aren't so far away from being suicidal.

This thing about looking for someone less different... It only really worked, he realized, if you were convinced that being you wasn't so bad in the first place.

Most people get suicide, I guess; most people, even if it's hidden deep down inside somewhere, can remember a time in their lives when they thought about whether they really wanted to wake up the next day. Wanting to die seems like it might be a part of being alive.

You have to work at relationships. You can’t just walk out on them every time something goes wrong.

I can see that now. I can see everything once it’s already happened — I’m very good at the past. It’s the present I can’t understand.