Did you really think I'd steer you wrong?" Then William pointed to the wide-open country beyond the next ridge. "New York's that way. My compass is unerring.

As if it were possible for one person to care about another and still treat him or her like this.

But what if time worked the other way around?What if what his adolescent self had felt then was the ghost of his present one, sitting here on a sagging bench, beckoning him into his future?

And didn't time always slow, anyway, the closer you came to what you wanted?

There is no such thing as a perfect phrase, or a private language, and . . . time only runs the one way.

Some people think the real them is whoever they are when they're not around other people.

It's like Charlie's dreamed everything he lived through here.

Everything's always changing, Charlie. We become who we are. The mask melts into the face.

Three’s all you need to change the world. Look at the Bolsheviks, or the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

William, an artist is someone who combines a desperate need to be understood with the fiercest love of privacy-

No amount of art, even of the Great American variety, can elevate you above, or insulate you from, the divisions, the cataclysms, of ordinary life.

Be prepared to say “no” to some things. That is the key. When you say “yes” to every invitation, event and call, you will come back to meet you plans on the paper in the same state you left them.

At least as coherent as the Gettysburg Address backwards in Albanian, anyway.

The market does not know you exist. You can do nothing to influence it. You can only control your behavior.

I look like a woman, but I think like a man.

As far as the Internet is concerned, we're not talking about closing the Internet. I'm talking about parts of Syria, parts of Iraq, where ISIS is, spotting it.

What are we when we are alone? Some, when they are alone, cease to exist.

Amiability shines by its own light.

Children are not looking for perfect parents, but they are looking for honest parents.

Most people get excited about games, but I've got to be excited about practice, because that's my classroom.

The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.