“Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out.”

“We all romanticize the people we adore.”

“It seemed like someone was always leaving someone, like that's the way the world worked—people were born and people died, people left and people came. It was like the world was saying you can't have everything you want at the same time.”

“The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought.”

“Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.”

“The thing about dead people... The thing is you sound like a bastard if you don't romanticize them, but the truth is... complicated, I guess.”