“I began dividing life in absolutes... Things and people were either perfectly bad, or perfectly good, and when life didn't obey this black-and-white rule, when things or people were complex or contradictory, I pretended otherwise. I turned every defeat into a disaster, every success into an epic triumph, and separated all people into heroes or villains. Unable to bear ambiguity, I built a barricade of delusions against it. ”

“Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.”

“I'd learned, though, that life isn't a movie. Though it's nice to believe in white-hatted heroes and black-hatted villains, people are a lot more complex than that.”

“Different is not a bad thing, for me it is what I do and love...because there is no perfect school nor a perfect world, for me trying to learn from all the people in my life everyday is exciting”

“That would be all nice and simple, wouldn't it? Be good and go to heaven; be bad and go to hell. Black and white. Rules to live by, to keep everybody civilized. But life isn't simple, so I don't know why we expect death to be. What there is . . . is continued existence. Complex, multilayered, and unique to every individual. Just like life is.”

“Bad things happen when good people pretend nothing is wrong.”