“The real orphans are words, always stumbling about to capture what must be said. And here they go again.”

“We see with our hearts. Our eyes are simple catalysts that carry images. Our eyes capture flowers and out heart knows serenity. Our eyes capture a child at play and our heart knows joy. They capture beauty and we know love. They capture war and we are acquainted with mortality. My eyes captured hatred and suffering, and my heart knew sorrow. They captured death and destruction and my heart knew fear.”

“I'm going to be fit and slim and beautiful. I'm going on a diet as of today.""Why? You've always said that looks don't matter and women only diet for men and life is obsessed with the superificial.""Yes, I know, but then I thought, hey wouldn't it be fun to be sexy?”

“If someone says, "You can make it!" down a vertical mountain when you don't ski very well, think about it before launching. This can be a turning point in your life. It sure was in mine when I slammed into the mountain. I wish I'd said, "F'getabout it, sucka," and gone to the Kiddie Corral. Would have saved a lot of pain and surgery.Think about this. What are you really up for? Is the thrill worth the cost?”

“What trouble we go to, trying to fool people who see right through us anyhow.”

“I told them what I had discovered about Nabokov's sentences: Because the word string and the thoughts behind the words are so original, the reader's brain can't jump ahead. There is no opportunity to make assumptions, no mental leapfrogging to the end of the sentence. So the reader is suspended in the perfect moment of now. You can only experience now. The sentences celebrate the absolute instant of creation. "It takes your breath away.”

“Nabokov changed my life," Max said. "I was going to be a writer, and then I read Lolita and I decided to go to law school instead. It looked easier.”