“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflict than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.”

“It is all too common for caterpillars to become butterflies and then to maintain that in their youth they had been little butterflies. Maturation makes liars of us all.”

“He wondered why it was easier to believe in a malevolent spirit than in a benign one. Sometimes it seemed that the human heart, this side of Eden, feared eternal life more than death, light more than darkness, freedom more than surrender.”

“I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned. Adult. You have become adult.”

“In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.”

“It's easier to be me than someone else. But just like most famous people, I just want to be left alone most of the time.”