“So much for being a good friend was knowing when to keep your mouth shut.”

“Maybe that was the answer to good parentingpretending the first child was the second.”

“Some people smoked crack in alleyways. Franny ate chocolate. On the scale of things, it seemed entirely reasonable.”

“There was nothing in life harder or more important than agreeing every morning to stay the course, to go back to your forgotten self of so many years ago, and to make the same decision.”

“Maybe that was the answer to good parenting—pretending the first child was the second.”

“She had the wild look of someone who hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours, with purplish semicircles underneath both her eyes. Being eighteen was like being made out of rubber and cocaine.”

“Youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.”

“Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it al...”

“The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.”