“Talking to them was like being placed into conversational purgatory, with no hope of being released without significant damage to one's self-esteem.”

“...the Sierra, a region so quiet and pristine that we have the sense of being the first human beings ever to set foot in it. We fall silent ourselves in its midst, as if conversation in a place of such primaevl solitude would be like talking in church.”

“Ridiculous really, when you think that I come from a broken home and I probably have low self-esteem. But the way I see it, people who go around spending themselves easily don’t have low self-esteem. They have really high self-esteem. If someone like me tried to live like that, there’d be nothing left. I don’t know. It’s complicated. The girls who roll with guys like this are gorgeous. Somehow that makes them immune to being reduced.”

“Maybe being married is talking to oneself with one's other self listening.”

“There is a certain type of conversation one hears only when one is drunk and it is like a dream, full of humor and threat and significance, deep significance.”

“Self-esteem comes from being able to define the world in your own terms and refusing to abide by the judgments of others.”