“When you see an ex, you have to look better than you've ever looked. It's like the first rule of breakups. You have to make them think, 'Damn, I missed out on that?' It's the only way.”

“And if you think that you're showing your love to Catherine by suffering the way you've been doing, then somewhere along the way, I must have messed up in raising you.""You didn't mess up....""I must have. Because when I look at you, I see myself, and to be honest, I'd rather see someone different. I'd like to see someone who learned that it's okay to go on, that it's okay to find someone that can make you happy. But right now, it's like I'm looking in the mirror and seeing myself twenty years ago.”

“Once you see some things, you can never forget them. If you don't want to have to see them for the rest of your life, it's better not to look in the first place.”

“And I bet it's harder than people think, isn't it? Everything looks so simple from a distance. Then, the more you look, the more you see. And that's when you have to rise to the challenge.”

“I just think it's bad when a boy looks at a girl and thinks that the way he sees her is better than she actually is. And I think it's bad when the most honest way a boy can look at a girl is through a camera.”

“A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life.”