“But insight doesn't necessarily produce self-control. Sometimes you just see your destructiveness more clearly.”

“Most of you guys can't see the potential in a nervous breakdown. A real collapse. There's more chance of finding yourself in a major depression than there is in a bottle Prozac.”

“Sometimes when you push someone, you find out who that person really is.”

“Maybe the trying is the thing. Maybe it doesn't get better than that. Maybe you never quite get there. And maybe that's okay.”

“What was it about not knowing a person that allowed you to wonder whether she might be the answer to all your problems?”

“Most children would rather preserve the fantasy of a loving connection with their fathers and mothers, at all costs, even if it costs them their self-esteem. When you're three or seven years old, it's less frightening to think of yourself as an unlovable, disappointing screwup than to recognize the fact that you're living with a monster.”

“Nothing overdone, nothing racy, which made her all the more alluring.”