“Nobody knows how things will turn out, that's why they go ahead and play the game...You give it your all and sometimes amazing things happen, but it's hardly ever what you expect.”

“Life is amazing, isn't it? You can't ever tell what will happen. Nobody knows until they go ahead and play the game.”

“You have to wait for good things to happen—wait and wait and work so hard—but bad things occur out of the blue, like fire alarms triggered in the dead of night, blaring randomly, a shock of sound, a chatter of current from which there is no turning back. There's only the day that starts like any other, and when it ends, it leaves you shaken, wobbly, unsure of where you stand, the patch of ground that holds your feet dissolving, disintegrating from under you. Often there's a sign, a harbinger of what's to come. Sometimes there are many signs, like black crows scattered in the road, but they blend into the scenery on the path ahead. You can only spot them when you look back.”

“Now I understand. When you love someone, you have to try things even if they don't make sense to anyone else.”

“You get to Alcatraz by being the worst of the worst. Unless you're me. I came here because my mother said I had to.”

“Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

“And you know what the worst thing was?The worst thing was that nobody ever believed how hard we tried.”