...trying to be a good mother may be as distant from being a good mother as trying to have a good time is from truly having one.

You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.

In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.

Time itself made all things rare.

Funny how the nature of a normal day is the first memory to fade.

Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn't tell well. And of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story.

...whenever a woman describes a man as sweet, the dalliance is doomed.

Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.

I thought at the time that I couldn't be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that's a common conceit, that you've already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.

I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.

My mind is huge with little stories that I never told you.

Give me an enthusiastic, purpose-oriented person and I will give a successful future leader.

feed ur destiny and not ur history. stop dwelling on your disappoinments but prepare for your Appointments

Perplexity is the beginning of a new way.

There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, "Mistakes were made," you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.

I watched as an extremely nerdy exhibitor - I'm talking about a guy who makes Bill Gates look like Brad Pitt.

Capitalism is destroying Mother Earth, and to destroy Mother Earth is to destroy humanity.

Hannah wasn't my first kiss, but the first kiss that mattered: the first kiss with someone who mattered. (pg 222).

You're either slangin' crack rock, or you got a wicked jumpshot.

Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.