“Originality breeds contempt. People will be jealous (in other words, 'hate') and the first thing out of their mouth is 'they don't get it'. Only when time and market share expands and the rest of the world is doing the exact thing you came up with first, will you be perceived as being normal since everyone else is doing it. When in truth, time has finally caught up to you.”

“For the first time in his life, the very first time in his life, he hated her. Or he tried to, at least. Tried mightily. But it is a hell of a thing to hate your own mother, to hate where you came from, to hate what succored you and nourished you when you could not do it for yourself. A hell of a thing to hate that, even when it hates you, even when it calls you a nothing, calls you garbage and tells you to throw yourself away. Because even then, she is still your mother.”

“If you follow the crowd, you will likely get no further than the crowd. If you walk alone, you're likely to end up in places no one has ever been before. Being an achiever is notwithout its difficulties, for peculiarity breeds contempt. The unfortunate thing about being ahead of your time is that when people finally realize you were right, they'll simply say it was obvious to everyone all along. You have two choices in life. You can dissolve into the main stream, or you can choose to become an achiever and be distinct. To be distinct, you must be different. To be different, you must strive to be what no else but you can be.”

“But the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that's the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn't anybody laughing. I haven't heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”

“I don't believe in the white spectre-type of ghosts you get in stories, but what if ghosts are something else? Like memories somehow caught and trapped in time, released by being in certain places where things first happened.”

“The only time you truly become an adult is when you finally forgive your parents for being just as flawed as everyone else.”