“For careers you say you went to be remembered for your artYour obsessions get you known throughout the school for being strangeMaking life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay”

“I've been feeling downI've been looking round the townFor somebody just like meBut the only ones I seeAre the dummies in the windowThey spend their money on clothesIt saddens me to thinkThat the only ones I see are mannequinsLooking stupid, being used and being thinAnd I don't know why I hang around with them.The way they act, I'd rather be fat than be confused.”

“If at the one moment in your life when the chance of something transcendental is offered to you, if you have this chance to move beyond the surface of things, to understand - and you say, No, maybe not... What then? How do you explain the rest of your life to yourself? How do you pass the time until you die? Do you substitute for that an interest in what - eating? Do you spend the next sixty years trying to be fascinated by the act of breathing?”

“What's wrong with you? I asked myself. You are a happy person. You are an upbeat sort of person. Men smile at you on the subway, women ask you what shampoo you use. Cheer up for Christ's sake, I told myself, relax, you're fine, be happy, Girl. When I talk to myself I call myself Girl.”

“Never, ever give up. Ever. Just because one editor rejects you doesn’t mean the whole world is crashing down. Look outside. Sky’s still standing? Yep? Okay, send your work to someone else.”

“I don't want to die without telling you that I love you," Everett's voice was a faint, wavering whisper, and his lips swollen and bloodied. "I always have.”

“Years later, (Paul) Jones described the mental gymnastics that went into writing these scripts. "Every evening I would close my eyes in a quiet place in my apartment ... I would visualize the opening and walk myself through the day and imagine the different emotional states the market would go through... Then when you get there, you are ready for it. You have been there before. You are in a mental state to take advantage of emotional extremes because you have already lived through them.”