“Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them.”

“Stories only happen to people who can tell them.”

“Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape. ”

“We'd die here, old together, safe with each other's secrets. We were each other's juvenilia”

“The tree feels splintery, nasty to my touch; it feels Floridian, more reptile than vegetable, more stucco than stone. I do loathe this state, their Elba.”

“The real community of man, in the midst of all the self-contradictory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers...of all men to the extent they desire to know. But in fact, this includes only a few, the true friends, as Plato was to Aristotle at the very moment they were disagreeing about the nature of the good...They were absolutely one soul as they looked at the problem. This, according to Plato, is the only real friendship, the only real common good. It is here that the contact people so desperately seek is to be found...This is the meaning of the riddle of the improbable philosopher-kings. They have a true community that is exemplary for all other communities.”

“I had to become a patient. And I had to make up my mind quickly before the unthinkable happened. So I went under the knife. And I surrendered, knowing surgery can fail, no matter how hard we wish it to succeed. If surgery could end well - without risk - then it wouldn't be surgery as we know it. Without chance, luck, fate, it can't be surgery. They're all vital ingredients of the recipe.”