“For what is delusion but the prelude to hurt. And what is hurt but the prelude to rage.”

“A mouth of no distinction but well practiced, before I entered my teens, in irony. For what is irony but the repository of hurt? And what is hurt but the repository of hope?”

“Of our hurts we make monuments of survival. If we survive. ”

“Not what the mind sees, but what the mind imagines the eye must see.”

“Why should I want what's good for me?' Beatrice asked him, smiling. 'Is that what you want for yourself - only what's good for you?”

“In a family, what isn't spoken is what you listen for. But the noise of a family is to drown it out.”

“There is an hour when you realize: here is what you have been given. More than this, you won't receive. And what this is, what your life has come to, will be taken from you. In time.”