“All this gave way to my first encounter with guilt, which is still something entirely inscrutable to me, as if aliens were sending transmissions from another planet, telling me there is a right and a wrong in the universe.”

“Seeking a woman who looks like a feminized version of L. Ron Hubbard to help me decode intergalactic messages that I might receive on my Alien Communication Helmet. And after we receive and decode the messages, this female friend could help me make spaghetti with my aforementioned Alien Communication Helmet (it's basically a strainer with antennas). Please don’t send me telepathic thoughts, as it might disrupt transmissions from other galaxies. E-mail only if interested.”

“Some days,' I say, 'I feel like I don't belong anywhere in that world. That world out there. 'I point to Grant. 'People walk down our street and people drive down it and people ride their bicycles down it and all of them, even the ones I know, could be from another planet. And I'm a visiting alien.'And aliens don't belong anywhere,' Adam finishes for me, 'except in their own little corners of the universe.'Right,' I say.~pgs 57-58 Hattie and Adam on alienation”

“Can’t you even tell me if I’m on the right track?" Buckminster purred, and Dad shrugged his shoulders again. "But if you don’t tell me anything, how can I ever be right?" He circled something in an article and said, "Another way of looking at it would be, how could you ever be wrong?”

“All decisions we’ve come to accept as right or wrong are ingrained in us from the society in which we abide. Rights and wrongs are not universally known or transferable.”

“...and there I was sending all the wrong signals to the right people in the wrong ways. Again, again, again.”