“We need an opposition to remind us if we are making mistakes. When you are not opposed you think everything you do is right.”

“Everyone thinks you make mistakes when you're young. But I don't think we make any fewer when we're grown up.”

“The way the animals live, everybody envies them, because look, a cat, when it walks--did you ever see a cat making an aesthetic mistake. Did you ever see a badly formed cloud? Were the stars ever misarranged? When you watch the foam breaking on the seashore, did it ever make a bad pattern? Never. And yet we think in what we do, we make mistakes.”

“The hardest thing about being a parent is watching your kids make mistakes. Our instinct is to protect you. But you're right, Deenie. Sometimes we have to step aside and let you make them anyway. The best we can do is be there when you mess up.”

“Everyone's redeemable right? We all make mistakes, huge, horrible mistakes, and in the end when we wake up to what we've done, most of us are sorry.”

“It was pivotal in making you but you don't remember it. Or do you? Do we understand the events that make us who we are? Do we understand the factors that make us do the things we do?”