But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel — independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic.

You can live your whole life not realizing that what you're looking for is right in front of you.

This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today.

Be nice wont you?" "I am nice, I'm always nice." "But not too nice. I mean don't make a religion out of it, niceness.

Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance

Envy was just the tax you paid on success.

Salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon, salmon. I eat so much salmon at these weddings, twice a year I get this urge to swim upstream.

I'm not the consolation prize, Dex. I'm not something you resort to. I happen to think I'm worth more than that.

Whatever happens tomorrow, we had today; and I'll always remember it

No, friends were like clothes: fine while they lasted but eventually they wore thin or you grew out of them.

Just kidding' was exactly what people wrote when they meant every word.

Visions are for the Heavens to see.

As a motivation —for humans, but Christians especially— guilt is always wrong and can never move them to do anything He wants of them. Never let them realize that.

We live in a society obsessed with public opinion. But leadership has never been about popularity.

Bore: one who has the power of speech but not the capacity for conversation.

I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.

The limitations you are willing to accept establish the boundaries of your existence.

What if you take a human mind, and upload it into one of these machines?

A man's got to keep company a long time, and come early and stay late and sit close, before he can get a girl or a job worth having.

In private conversation between intimate friends, the wisest men very often talk like the weakest : for indeed the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.