“Flawed Human Parents + Shit Life Throws At You = Childhood That 'Builds Character.”

“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”

“I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws. Not that Dostoyevsky's characters don't generate phatos, but they're flawed in ways that don't come across as faults. And while I'm on the subject, Tolstoy's characters' faults are so epic and out of scale, they're as static as backdrops.”

“You build a character, a shell, and if you build it right, something comes to live inside it.”

“There is no worse flaw in man's character than that of wanting to belong.”

“There is a separation between parents and children that shouldn't be breached when the children are young. The parents' adult follies are private. They're disturbing and hard to understand. But eventually the kids wise up, the follies start leaking out, and the parents are revealed in all their flawed humanity. Dad and I were about to cross that boundary for good.”