“You're trapped both ways. You do as you are told and you do things that you think will make you big, but all the time you're shrinking.”

“What do you do when you're drowning but the only way to be free is to hold on to the one thing in all the world you're afraid won't be able to keep both os you afloat?”

“You can't do extraordinary things in the world if you're spending time criticizing others because they don't look or behave the way you think they should.”

“I think that everything you do helps you to write if you're a writer. Adversity and success both contribute largely to making you what you are. If you don't experience either one of those, you're being deprived of something.”

“You think you're no good, so you can't do good things. Jesus, Codi, how long are you going to keep limping around on that crutch? It's the other way around, it's what you *do* that makes you who you are.”

“If you don't believe in the things you're doing, the answer isn't fooling yourself into thinking you believe it. If you don't believe in what you're doing, then you just shouldn't be doing it.”