You can't just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different.

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.

I see now that my faith was becoming an ally rather than an enemy because I could vent anger freely, even toward God, without fearing retribution.

Made a decision. I will never let a sunny day happen without me again. Darkness is almost always guaranteed unless some strange thing happens. But the sun...?! Go get some.

The reason we can say anything we want in America is that we know it makes no difference.

The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped.

You can create viable ventures out of turbulent adventure.

Drink wine, drink poetry, drink virtue.

A man will do more for his stubbornness than for his religion or his country

If you are not taking responsibility for your state of consciousness, you are not taking responsibility for life.

A guy isn't the only thing that will make me happy. If I never find romance or love, that will be okay. It's what I want, but it doesn't define me.

Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self.