“Along with the joy of parenthood, with every child comes a piercing vulnerability. It is at once sublime and terrifying”

“I know there is no point in haranguing him because he will just shut down, but I want to cover every angle.”

“Through Nic's drug addiction, I have learned that parents can bear almost anything....I shock myself with my ability to rationalize and tolerate things once unthinkable. The rationalizations escalate....It's only marijuana. He gets high only on weekends. At least he's not using hard drugs....”

“That's when it struck me that I can't take my life as long as I can still laugh.”

“In his suicide note, Kurt Cobain wrote, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." He was quoting a Neil Young song about Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. When I was twenty-four, I interviewed John Lennon. I asked him about this sentiment, one that pervades rock and roll. He took strong, outraged exception to it. "It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out, " he said. "I worship people who survive. I'll take the living and the healthy.”

“How innocent we are of our mistakes and how we responsible we are for them.”

“A world of contradictions, wherein everything is gray and almost nothing is black and white.”