“Everybody breaks sooner or later, Bob. Anyone can drown. Sometimes you see it. Most often, youdont because the body protects and the skin hides, so drowning doesnt look like drowning and somepeople...”

“Honestly, Bob: how do you carve a scream?”

“Tell yourself youre dead, the way Matt does, so the past cant hurt you.”

“...she said all writers were prima donnas, drunks, social misfits, pompous, or depressed. Brilliant, maybe, but completely crazy.”

“Tell yourself you’re dead, the way Matt does, so the past can’t hurt you.”

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.”

“So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.”

“The splendid thingabout falling apartsilently...is thatyou can start overas many timesas you like.”

“You don't need an ocean to feel like you're drowning. You feel it, between your chest and your throat, the weight of it stretching you outside your self, like a dead fish on the shore.”

“He danced across my heart like a pirate,Constantly discovering my secrets,Turning over every hidden treasure,Drowning me in his fantasy.”

“I'm drowning and you're stealing every breath.”

“After that hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used ...”

“He realized that when he had been afraid to change he had been holding on to the illusion of Old Cheese that was no longer there”

“Where to start?Everything cracks and shakes,The air trembles with similes,No one world's better than another;the earth moans with metaphors.”