“It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken upon the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended from these thrones. We have descended into hell. We were complaining of unforgettable miseries even at the very moment when this man entered insolently to accuse us of happiness. I repel the slander; we have not been happy.”

“Alan had never been stabbed or shot or punctured or broken. Were scars the best evidence of living? If we have not survived something, and thus were certain that we'd lived, we could scar ourselves, couldn't we?”

“We have all been placed on this earth to discover our own path, and we will never be happy if we live someone else's idea of life.”

“We can only be ourselves in the long run. Everyone can be someone else for a time. Actors have jobs for a reason. But eventually, our true natures win out. You never could have been someone else for long, even if you tried. It would have broken you”

“The stories told by ancient peoples from which we are descended have managed to put into pleasant and entertaining words what we’ve been repeating ever since in living rooms, courts, churches, and therapy sessions. The “life tips” that we seek have been there for us all along.”

“I am aware of sadness, of a sense of loss. Here, I say, we have lived, we have been happy. This has been ours, however brief the time. Though two nights only have been spent beneath a roof, yet we leave something of ourselves behind. Nothing material, . . . but something indefinable, a moment of our lives, a thought, a mood.The house sheltered us, we spoke, we loved within those walls. That was yesterday. To-day we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again.”