“The only things people can ever know about you are the ones that you let them see”

“Leanoardo wrote that a painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light. Most painters do the opposite, starting with a whitewash and adding the shadows last. But Paul, who knows Leonardo so well you'd thing the old man slept on the bottom bunk, understands the value of starting with the shadows. The only things people can ever know about you are the ones you let them see.”

“You can sit up here, feeling above it all while knowing you’re not, coming to the lonely conclusion that the only thing you can ever really know about anyone is that you don’t know anything about them at all.”

“People mess up, you know? But you can’t see past it. It’s like you choose one thing about them—the worst thing—and say, ‘That’s who they are,’ and ignore the rest of it. Why not choose the best thing about them instead? Or the thing they do the most?”

“You are not alone. You are instead lonely. There is loneliness as can exist only in the midst of numbers and numbers of people who don’t know you, who don’t care about you, who won’t let you care about them.”

“The hardest thing is being with other people - it's like they're on a different wavelenght, but only you know it. They talk about their lives and what's wrong with them, and you kind of, like, just let them go. It's a whole different language, and you've got to remember that you can only respond in their mother tongue. It's really hard to relate.”