“I didn't normally talk this way: but sometimes you have to pretend to be an innocent child to learn something about the complicated world of adults.”

“Because this is one of the things I learned on my own: you need to say things simply, especially when they're complicated.”

“At the time, I thought this was just one of those vague things adults say to remind you that you're a kid who doesn't know what adults know. But it seemed now it was one of those specific things adults say to remind you that you're a kid who doesn't know what adults know.”

“There is something underwhelming about scholarly hate mail — the sad literary allusions, the refusal to use contractions – and so I didn't pay much attention to those letters at all.”

“It was a complicated look. I remember thinking that, and I also remember thinking that you had to have known someone for a really long time to be able to look at him like that, and he had to have known you for a really long time to be able to understand it.”

“All of this made me feel better about myself, and I was grateful to the books for teaching me-without my even having to read them- that there were people in the world more desperate, more self-absorbed, more boring than I was. - about memoirs”

“They [my eyes] immediately started to tear up, tears being your eyes' way of forbidding you to look away,of forcing you to look at the world you've made or unmade. ”