“If love of money is the root of all evil, then having money is the root of all boredom. When you can have everything, you find there's nothing you really want. When you can do anything, you find there's nothing you really care to do. You become lazy. Life feels like a boulder you don't want to lift.”

“There was never anything wrong with my life. Perhaps that was the problem... The crack in my life was the fact that I had everything I wanted, or could ever want—and when you have it all, boredom grows like a fungus, coating everything you own and everything you feel.”

“How can you do the right thing when you can't figure out what that is? When all you have before you are choices in various shades of wrong?”

“All I'm saying is that, unless you're immortal, nothing can really belong to you. The best you can hope for is to hold something for a while, but in the end you've got to give it back.”

“Lethargy. It's a word I know, because it's in one of my father's favorite expressions. Lethargy breeds lethargy. It means the more you lie around doing nothing, the more you want to lie around doing nothing. Your limbs and your mind feel so heavy that it becomes a major effort just to lift your arm to channel surf.”

“Sure, I can talk like you, but I choose not to, It's like an art, you know? Picasso had to prove to the world he could paint the right way, before he goes putting both eyes on the side of a face... See if you paint wrong because that's the best you can do, you just a chump. But you do it because you want to? Then you're an artist...You can take that to the grave and dig it up when you need it.”

“I always hear people talk about 'dysfunctional families.' It annoys me, because it makes you think that somewhere there's this magical family where everyone gets along, and no one ever screams things they don't mean, and there's never a time when sharp objects should be hidden. Well, I'm sorry, but that family doesn't exist. And if you find some neighbors that seem to be the grinning model of 'function,' trust me - that's the family that will get arrested for smuggling arms in their SUV between soccer games.The best you can really hope for is a family where everyone's problems, big and small, work together. Kind of like an orchestra where every instrument is out of tune, in exactly the same way, so you don't really notice.”