“Why is your hair green?” “It’s a fashion statement.” “It’s hideous. And even if it weren’t . . . tinted . . . or whatever you did to it, it still wouldn’t do. We haven’t had a blond Pythia before; it’s simply not what people expect to see. And, frankly, it doesn’t suit you.” “It’s my natural color!” “Then it’s naturally hideous. And this”—he tugged at my curls—“will have to go.” “If you touch me one more time—” I said softly. “I’ll make you an appointment with a hairdresser who understands that we need suave. We need sophisticated. We need—well, someone else, obviously, but—”

“We need houses as we need clothes, architecture stimulates fashion. It’s like hunger and thirst — you need them both.”

“Listen, I’m going to give you some advice, not because Ithink you need it, but because I feel like I’ve earned it. The right, I mean. To give advice. Here it is:don’t hold onto things. It’s a problem the men in my family have. It’s taken me a long time to figurethis out. Me, my father, my grandfather, we collect things. We collect miseries. It’s what we do. Butsometimes the best thing to do is to just let things go. To let them pass.”

“You…you need to move on,” I managed. Yes, that was a sound reason. “You need to find someone else. You know I don’t—that I can’t. Well, you know. You’re wasting your time with me.”He remained firm. “It’s my time to waste.”

“Charlie, don’t you get it? I can’t feel that. It’s sweet and everything, but it’s like you’re not even there sometimes. It’s great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn’t need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can’t. You have to do things.”

“They don’t understand that religion and science are there to serve different purposes. We need science to understand how everything on this planet and beyond works – us, nature, everything we see around us. That’s fact – no one with a working brain can question that. But we also need religion. Not for ridiculous counter-theories about things that science can prove. We need it for something else, to fill a different kind of need. The need for meaning. It’s a basic need we have, as humans. And it’s a need that’s beyond the realm of science. Your scientists don’t understand that it’s a need they can’t fulfill no matter how many Hadron colliders and Hubble telescopes they build- and your preachers don’[t understand that their job is to help you discover a personal, inner sense of meaning and not behave like a bunch of zealots intent on converting the rest of the planet to their rigid, literalist view of how everyone should live their lives.”