“Each of us, deep down, believes that the whole world issues from his own precious body, like images projected from a tiny slide onto an earth-sized screen. And then, deeper down, each of us knows h...”

“I'm a staunch monogamist. In practice, if not in theory. I can't help it. Do I acknowledge the oppressive, regressive nature of sexual exclusivity? Yes. Do I want that exclusivity very badly for my...”

“Only here, long after midnight, while everyone else was sleeping, when nothing was expected of him, could Schwartz convince himself that he was working hard enough. These hours felt stolen, added t...”

“It dawned on himas it hadnt before; he was dense, he was slowthat his parents were five hundred miles away. They could make him come home, they could refuse to pay the portion of his tuition theyd ...”

“He already knew he could coach. All you had to do was look at each of your players and ask yourself: What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself? And then you told the guy th...”

“AVERT DISASTER, in fact, would have been a perfect school mottothe purpose of the place, as far as Schwartz could tell, was to keep three thousand would-be maniacs sedated by boredom until a succes...”

“Failure is not the end of life. It is the beginning of a greater success, if thy will persist.”

“Education must be an equal opportunity for all.”

“Success is shown to us as a straight line, heading in one direction, up. There are no detours, no turn-arounds, no missteps allowed. ... When you arent allowed to fail, either due to the expectatio...”

“I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,I see my father strolling outunder the ochre sandstone arch, thered tiles glinting like bentplates of blood behind his head, Isee my mother...”

“We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in...”

“Id never heard my parents make love. If they made love, they did it silently, like bank robbers, like surgeons.”