“To hell with what anyone thinks about your life, but you should know what you think about it.”

“You only confuse hope with power once in life.”

“In the argument over whether knowledge is power or ignorance is bliss, it seems I've always come down on the side of ignorance. And when that's the side you fall on, you don't realize it until it's...”

“There are so many things I dare not say I have quietly stopped being me.”

“You don't always get to know what happened, or why things happened a certain way, but it always, always, goes deeper than any one thing.”

“Alcohol was like a fun cousin I visited every once in a while but never planned a trip around.”

“Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.”

“Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face - I know it's an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.”

“So its true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.”

“How do you mourn endless numbers of people in endless numbers of places? Is there a form for it, a requisite time and place for mourning? Is there ever an end to it? Can there ever be an end to it?”

“It's all rather political, mourning is.”

“And that was part of the tragedy: I had just started to know her. I was mourning the relationship that could have blossomed but didnt have a chance to grow.”

“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.”