“He described the experience as being 'a little bit less fun, perhaps, than chain-smoking for ninety minutes while handcuffed to a dowager with asthma who used to teach Health and smells incontinent.”

“...I might mention my belief that girls who like Woody Allen movies are nicer girls than girls who don't...”

“Without pain, there is no call for anger, much less rampaging.”

“Nonetheless, he is a boy. Despite his talents, a boy. And a boy is more idealistic than a man, and high ideals in the hands of children can be as dangerous as weapons. He thought he was in the right, and because he thought he was in the right, he thought there would be an exception. That's that.”

“The point was to learn what it was we feared more: being misunderstood or being betrayed.”

“You fucked up,' he said. 'Know that you're someone who fucked up. But know that doesn't make you a fuckup. The difference is a matter of repetition”

“...I know there are a number of things you know, probably too many things you know--too many, I say, not because any kind of knowledge has the capacity to be bad in itself, but rather because certain kinds of knowledge, particularly those kinds we often describe as arcane, can, by way of their very arcanity, serve to obscure the knowledge-bearer's understanding of the mundane.”