“The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up.”

“Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash.”

“Everybody looks a little crazy if you're looking close enough and if you can't look that close, then you don't really love them.”

“If you look at old pictures, Irene Casey is so pretty. Not just young, but pretty the way you look when your face goes smooth, the skin around your eyes and lips relaxed, the pretty you only look when you love the person taking the picture.”

“Picture anybody growing up so stupid he didn't know that hope is just another phase you'll grow out of.”

“Because everything up to now is a story and everything after now is a story.”

“How everything you ever love will reject you or die. Everything you ever create will be thrown away. Everything you're proud of will end up as trash. ”