"In his or her own way, everyone I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon in late September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene."
"This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything, don't get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it's ready to come undone. You have to realize it's going to be along process and that you'll work on things slowly, one at a time."
"Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that."
"I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once."
"Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action."
"Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment."