"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."
"Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action."
"It just happens to be the way that I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them."
"Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt."
"Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that."
"But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives."