“As the expression goes, we spend our youth attaining wealth, and our wealth attaining youth.”

“I didn't realize then that so much of being adult is reconciling ourselves with the awkwardness and strangeness of our own feelings. Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience.”

“Our conversations are never easy, but as I-we-get older, we are finding that our conversations must bespoken. A need burns inside us to share with others what we are feeling Beyond a certain age, sincerity ceases to feel pornographic. It is as though the coolness that marked out youth is itself a type of retrovirus that can only leave you feeling empty. Full of holes.”

“We spend all our youth chasing money, and when we attain it, we spend all our money chasing youth.”

“Mom said that people are interested in birds only in as much as they exhibit human behavior - greed and stupidity and anger - and by doing so they free us from the unique sorrow of being human...I told Mom my own theory of why we like birds - of how birds are a miracle because they prove to us there is a finer, simpler state of being which we may strive to attain.”

“Our curse as humans is that we are trapped in time; our curse is that we are forced to interpret life as a sequence of events - a story - and when we can't figure out what our particular story is, we feel lost somehow.”

“I am aware that there is a world out there that functions without regard to me. There are wars and budgets and bombings and vast dimensions of wealth and greed and ambition and corruption. And yet I don't feel a part of that world, and I wouldn't know how to join if I tried.”