“I require of all my students… that they are downy and pubescent, pimpled with sullen mistrust, and boiling away with private fury and ardor and uncertainty and gloom. I require that they wait in the corridor for ten minutes at least before each lesson, tenderly nursing their injustices, picking miserably at their own unworthiness as one might finger a scab or caress a scar. If I am to teach your daughter, you darling hopeless and inadequate mother, she must be moody and bewildered and awkward and dissatisfied and wrong. When she realizes that he body is a secret, a dark and yawning secret of which she becomes more and more ashamed, come back to me. You must understand me on this point. I cannot teach children.”

“Gaining control isn't the exciting part. Sleeping with a minor isn't exciting because you get to boss them around. It's exciting because you're risking so much. And taking a risk is exciting because of the possibility that you might lose, not the possibility that you might win.”

“Remember that anybody who is clever enough to set you free is clever enough to enslave you.”

“It is a mark of the depth of their wounding that they are pretending they suspected it all along. Everything that they have seen and been told about love so far has been an inside perspective, and they are not prepared for the crashing weight of this exclusion. It dawns on them now how much they never saw and how little they were wanted, and with this dawning comes a painful re-imagining of the self as peripheral, uninvited, and utterly minor.”

“I have a plan.”He groaned. “I was afraid of that.”“My plans are not terrible.”“Isabelle’s plans are terrible.” He pointed a finger at her. “Your plans are suicidal. At best.”She sat back, her arms crossed over her chest. “Do you want to hear it or not? You have to keep it a secret.”“I would pluck out my own eyes with a fork before I would give away your secrets,” Simon said, then looked anxious. “Wait a second. Do you think that’s likely to be required?”

“Näyttämön varsinainen jännitys on siinä, että jokin voi mennä vikaan minä hetkenä hyvänsä. Minä hetkenä hyvänsä jokin lavalla voi särkyä tai kaatua; joku voi sotkea vuorosanansa, joku voi pilata valot, joku voi unohtaa korostuksensa tai repliikkinsä. Elokuvan katsominen ei koskaan herätä samaa pelokkuutta, koska lopputulos on aina valmis, ania sama ja aina eheä, mutta näytelmän katsominen herättää sitä usein, koska jokin voi mennä vikaan, ja silloin joutuu katselemaan myötähäpeisin tuntein miten näyttelijät takeltelevat ja kokoavat itsensä. Mutta toisaalta, kun on teatterisalin silkinpehmeässä pimeässä, sitä myös toivoo, että jokin menisi vikaan. Sitä haluaa koko sydämestään. Sitä tuntee lämpöä jokaista näyttelijää kohtaan, jonka hattu putoaa tai nappi irtoaa. -- Jos näkee virheen, joka jää muulta yleisöltä näkemättä, sitä tuntee oikein erityistä etuoikeuden tunnetta, aivan kuin olisi nähnyt vilaukselta sauman kätketystä alusvaatteesta, jostain todella yksityisestä.”

“Now let me teach you another thing about my daughter. I love her very much but she has the ability to hide as expertly as a sock in a washing machine. No one knows where it goes, just as no one knows where she goes, but at least when she decides to come back, we're all here, waiting for her.”