I didn't want to see them lower him into the ground in the spot he'd picked out with his dad, and I didn't want to see his parents sink to their knees in the dew-wet grass and moan in pain.

Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.

Amsterdam is like the rings of a tree: It gets older as you get closer to the center.

I feel like crying, so I must be crying, but it's impossible to tell because I'm underwater.

...And in freedom, most people find sin.

So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

A taste so profound and complex that it can't even be compared to other tastes, only to emotions. Cheesy waffles, I was thinking, tastes like love without the fear of love's dissolution.

My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.

The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.

All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm.

I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.

Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam.

You will learn to make better decisions in life with experience and time.

Why was it librarians had such a prim image? With all the information available in books right there at their fingertips, librarians could be the best-informed people around. About anything.

I want to be good at what I do, obviously, and to do that I need to keep my head straight.

The crime of a mother is a heavy burden.

Anything you are exclusively attached to & identify with ends up distorting & limiting awareness.

Nothing worth while is every easy come by.

Not only don't I know who I am, but I'm very suspicious of people who do know who they are. I am sometimes ten or twelve people a day, and sometimes four or five people an hour!

"More fun than a barrel of monkeys." Has anyone ever stopped to think how cranky, if not downright vicious, a barrelful of monkeys would be, especially once released from the barrel?

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.