“I feel overwhelmingly grateful to them, but I don't know what to do with their invisible gifts.”

“For a second, I feel a sense of overwhelming grief: for how things change, for the fact that we can never go back. I'm not certain of anything anymore. I don't know what will happen--”

“I don't know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don't know what to think or what I am.”

“And if college is all wrong for you, if you really don't like it in the way you fear, well - it won't be a waste to have gone. Having bad experiences sometimes helps; its makes it clearer what it is you should be doing. I know that sounds very Pollyannaish but it's true. People who have had only good experiences aren't very interesting. They may be content, and happy after a fashion, but they aren't very deep. It may seem a misfortune now, and it makes things difficult, but well - it's easy to feel all the happy, simple stuff. Not that happiness is necessarily simple. But I don't think you're going to have a life like that, and I think you'll be the better for it. The difficult thing is to not be overwhelmed by the bad patches. You mustn't let them defeat you. You must see them as a gift - a cruel gift, but a gift nonetheless.”

“What we don't let out traps us. We think, No one else feels this way, I must be crazy. So we don't say anything. And we become enveloped by a deep loneliness, not knowing where our feelings come from or what to do with them. Why do I feel this way?”

“What's the pleasure?' I asked.'Planning, I guess. I don't know. Doing stuff never feels as good as you hope it will feel.”