“And Hannah?" he says. "Don't beat yourself up too much. You know, about the whole Noah thing. Sometimes it happens.”

“In life, we don't know why things happen. I believe God is not responsible for the bad things that happen to you. Sometimes I think He's responsible for the good things, but sometimes it's something you shape up for yourself.”

“I don't mind nothing happening in a book, but nothing happening in a phony way--characters saying things people never say, doing jobs that don't fit, the whole works--is simply asking too much of a reader. Something happening in a phony way must beat nothing happening in a phony way every time, right? I mean, you could prove that, mathematically, in an equation, and you can't often apply science to literature.”

“Don't beat yourself up for not knowing the answers. You don't always have to know who you are. You don't have to have the big picture, or know where you're heading. Sometimes, it's enough just to know what you're going to do next.”

“I say too much of what, he says too much of everything, too much stuff, too many places, too much information, too many people, too much of things for there to be too much of, there is too much to know and I don't know where to begin but I want to try.”

“Too many people who don't know anything about anything say too much about what they don't know.”