“If you can smile at your troubles then honey, you are half way saved. - Louise from Adventures with Max and Louise”

“When you're down, remember your triumphs. [...] Sometimes you get in trouble and crash. Other times: just a bumpy landing.”

“Max can’t help it,” Eddie says. “The teenaged brain isn’t wired for empathy. It’s designed to look forward.” “If you heard him, why didn’t you say something?” “Nothing to be gained. There are articles about it.” Eddie pours himself a cup of coffee. “Think of Max as a butterfly emerging from his cocoon. At this point in its development, the butterfly is too busy to think of anything but emerging. It’s an all-consuming task. It can’t develop other skills until later. Max will learn sympathy later on.” “I see. He’ll become a caring human being once he’s stopped emerging?” “Exactly.” “Or else he’ll turn into a serial killer by the age of twenty.”

“Your job as a parent is not to make your child's way smooth, but rather to help her develop inner resources so she can cope.”

“You move forward. You face up to your challenges. You don't retreat. You're young, and sometimes you'll wish you could. But don't.”

“You’re not really afraid you’ll hurt him. You’re afraid because you believe it was wrong even to think it. But having a thought, even an awful one, is different from acting on it. All the difference in the world.”

“Thanks for . . . what you remember. And what you don’t. It’s not nothing. It’s a lot.”