“We feel most alive when we are closest to death.”

“All statistics have outliers.”

“Nobody wants to believe that existence carries on without at least taking a stumble from their departure of this world.”

“Once a flower is picked it immediately begins to die.”

“Now she knew living was just a brief hiatus, a blip really, in the infinite line of nothingness that composed that shadowy realm of the unknown. It could stop at any time.”

“Hatred is about possession. It is all-consuming, cruel, and vainglorious. When love is allowed to fester, it becomes twisted and corrupt; it settles deep in the heart...and metastasizes, sending it...”

“Reality depends a great deal upon one believing what he seesor seeing what he believes. Either way.”

“And now I know that you're the oneI've waited my whole life forYou're budding leaves turning green in springYou're the fresh breath of air that summer bringsYou're the autumn sky painted in rainbow...”

“Reality depends a great deal upon one believing what he sees—or seeing what he believes. Either way.”

“I never loved another person the way I loved myself.”

“She was pleased to have him come and never sorry to see him go.”

“Ducking for apples -- change one letter and it's the story of my life.”

“Sex can be used either for self-affirmation or for self-transcendence either to intensify the ego and consolidate the social persona by some kind of conspicuous embarkation and heroic conquest, or...”

“He didn't know all that much about how the machinery worked anyway. Such knowledge was for specialists. In war, as in love, he was a fearless, happy-go-lucky adventurer.”

“If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.”