I cried when my ex-girlfriend sent me a text message saying how much she liked my present to her.

Patriotism is the belief that not all human lives are worth the same.

I just don't feel good if I'm repeating myself.

If I don't like someone and I start reading their stuff, it seems like my brain will just automatically start criticizing everything that's there. It's really hard to read a book without having all this outside information telling you what to think about it.

Do you sometimes look up from the computer and look around the room and know you are alone, I mean really know it, then feel scared ?

As a child, she’d always had what she imagined were fascinating thoughts, but didn’t ever say them. Once, as a little girl, at recess, she thought that if she ran very fast at a pole and then caught it and swung quickly around, part of her would keep going, and she would become two girls.

If you're, like, a PhD student in English, and you look at each instance that Richard Yates is mentioned in the book...it has sort of it's own narrative that one could analyze and write literary criticism about.