“You get towards the end of life—no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?”

“There were never moments in your life when you actually saw something end, for whether you knew it or not something else was always flowering. Never a disappearance, always a transformation.”

“I'm talking about a little truth-in-packaging here. To be perfectly frank, you don't quite look like yourself. And if you walk around looking like someone other than who you are, you could end up getting the wrong job, the wrong friends, who knows what-all. You could end up with somebody else's life."I shrugged again, and smiled. "This is my life," I said. "It doesn't seem like the wrong one.”

“Whatever you want, at any moment, someone else is getting it. Whatever you have, someone else is longing for.”

“As long as there's such a thing as time, everybody's damaged in the end, changed into something else. It always happens, sooner or later.”

“If you are not working towards something, your life will end with nothing.”