“Life finds its balance. Children grow up. Second chances come along. In the meantime, I could choose to savor this moment. What good would it do to allow annoyance to interfere with gratitude?”

“I used to believe, although I don't now, that growing and growing up are analogous, that both are inevitable and uncontrollable processes. Now it seems to me that growing up is governed by the will, that one can choose to become an adult, but only at given moments. These moments come along fairly infrequently -during crises in relationships, for example, or when one has been given the chance to start afresh somewhere- and one can ignore them or seize them.”

“I cannot for the life of me understand why small children take so long to grow up. I think they do it deliberately, just to annoy me.”

“How do we come to choose what it is that we spend our days doing? Would we choose it again if we could? Did we choose it today, or has it simply carried us along somehow?”

“Everything seemed suspended, in some kind of balance. Obviously someone would come along and fuck it up, because that's what other people did.”

“If people have a problem who I choose to hang out with – that is their problem. I am not in the habit of allowing other people’s opinions and problems interfere with my own life.”