“(Quoting Goethe:)"We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.”

“We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.”

“Another thing I think about names is that they DO hurt. They hurt because we believe them. We think they are telling us something true about ourselves, something other people can see even if we don't. —Bobby Goodspeed”

“Who do you seewhen you look at them?You know the ones I mean:the others, the olders,the youngers, the oneswho are not you, notlike you or your friends,who wear the labelsyou give them untilthey give them back,saying, I believe thesebelong to you.”

“We all start out thinking that there is such a thing as perfection and that there's something wrong with us if we settle for less. First we won't eat the food with the brown spots. Then we hate ourselves because we have our own brown spots—pimples or ears that are too big or legs that are too skinny.”

“When you're living through them, events are nothing more than stuff that happens. You're not thinking about significance. Significance only comes when you look back at your life.”

“Some days I want to put my head in the sand. There's too much pain out there, there's too much that scares me. But I wouldn't be able to breathe with my head in the sand, and I wouldn't be able to hear or see or smell. The world is a lovely place...despite the sadness it holds for each of us, despite the terrible things we do.”