“When you're in college you haven't had that much life. Parents, school, assorted youth activities—that's about it.”

“...college wasn't more school, as Chris had anticipated. School was a normalization of the familiar. College was a penetration into the exotic.”

“You're perfect. To me you are. You always will be. When you're small you think that about your parents. When you're old, you think that about your kids. You'll see.”

“The keys to life are running and reading. When you're running, there's a little person that talks to you and says, "Oh I'm tired. My lung's about to pop. I'm so hurt. There's no way I can possibly continue." You want to quit. If you learn how to defeat that person when you're running. You will how to not quit when things get hard in your life. For reading: there have been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There's no new problem you could have--with your parents, with school, with a bully. There's no new problem that someone hasn't already had and written about it in a book.”

“That's the thing about parents, I'm beginning to realize. You don't have to see them all that much to imitate them.”

“It's as if once you hit high school, you're programmed, like a robot, to be an asshole to your parents.”