“There are choices you make not by planning but (as you make your shadow) by being where you are”

“On a certain afternoon of July, at the tawniest hour, on Galvez Island, the earth -- the tilting spinning earth -- was unearthly. There is no accounting for this adequacy, this splendor that overtakes you. You lack neither flour nor oil while the famine lasts. On a certain afternoon, at a certain hour, the earth is earth no longer, but a fragment of eternity. And you, greenhorn jest of time, are a fragment of eternity too.”

“Sophistication isn't what you wear or who you know, or pushing people down to get you where you want to go... soon your gonna find stealing other people toys on the playground won't make you many friends...”

“Live your life like you're 80 looking back on your teenager years. You know if your dad calls you at eight in the morning and asks if you want to go out for breakfast. As a teenager you're like no, I want to sleep. But as an eighty year old looking back you have that breakfast with your dad. It just little things like that, that helped me when I was a teenager in terms of making choices you won't regret.”

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”

“You are defined by the decisions you make. When one bites you in the ass the way you respond to it either makes or breaks you.”

“If you do choose to take action to help others, make sure you do it with no expectation of positive response from them. Do it because the act feels right. This will keep you from making more of a mess of the situation and your emotions.”