“Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting.”

“I was happy without having sought happiness.”

“I had no friends. Was I happy? I was wildly happy. Sitting on my bed, which took up most of the space in that narrow room, I whispered prayers of thanks that I was really and truly here in New York...”

“It is true that I suffered in a difficult and stupid love affair and that I worked at one bad job after another to try to keep myself going. Nevertheless, I remember that time as extraordinary, and...”

“Walking across campus made me feel sad, and I thought to myself, I wasn't happy there. Then, after reading, we walked past Butler Library. It was dark, but the light inside illuminated the windows....”

“There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition.”

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”

“My story is of such marvel that if it were written with a needle on the corner of an eye, it would yet serve as a lesson to those who seek wisdom.”

“There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what that means, simply take yourself - in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love - and multiply by 1,198,500,00...”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”

“World is not like what you see”

“What you see is what suffices you”

“...when they look at me, I so badly want to be who they see.”