“The best order of things, as I see it, is the one that includes me; to hell with the most perfect of worlds, if I'm not part of it.”

“Sordid things, for the most part, are what make human beings, my father included, move. That's what it is to be human, I'm afraid.”

“You have to give to the world the thing that you want the most, in order to fix the broken parts inside you.”

“Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.”

“I can finally see that all the terrible parts of my life, the embarrassing parts, the incidents I wanted to pretend never happened, and the things that make me "weird" and "different," were actually the most important parts of my life. They were the parts that made me ME.”

“Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.”