“I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn't like it, and changed.”

“Some presence had a hold of me in that moment that would change my life from then on. I didn't know what that change would look like or how it would happen. All I know was that it was there.”

“Nabokov changed my life," Max said. "I was going to be a writer, and then I read Lolita and I decided to go to law school instead. It looked easier.”

“I wish I knew how to change my patterns--all of them. But it's like the blood in my finger. I screw up and there it is, just the stuff I'm made of, making a mess again.”

“I had been riding horses before my memory kicked in, so my life with horses had no beginning. It simply appeared from the fog of infancy. I survived a difficult childhood by traveling on the backs of horses, and in adulthood the pattern didn't change.”

“I assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn't matter – that would be my life. ”