“Why were the other kids doing better than me? Because they were better, that's why That's what I knew every time I sat down online or got on the subway to Aaron's house. Other people weren't smoking or jerking off, and those that were were gifted-able to live and compete at the same time. I wasn't gifted. Mom was wrong. I was just smart and I worked hard. I had fooled myself into thinking that was something important to the rest of the world. Other people were complicit in this ruse. Nobody had told me I was common.”

“I wasn’t gifted. Mom was wrong. I was just smart and I worked hard. I had fooled myself into thinking that was something important to the rest of the world. Other people were complicit in this ruse. Nobody had told me I was common.”

“...those days were the only time in my life when I knew why I was in the world. It was the only time I knew what part I was playing in the creation of our common world...”

“I'd always thought of myself as an open-minded person. I had no patience with anyone who put down other kids because of their race, religion, or sexuality. But that's just one kind of open-mindedness. There's another kind, too, the kind that's willing to see people for who they really are and admit when you were wrong about them. That's the part I still need to work on.”

“But like many who are lonely, I was more preoccupied with others than were those who lived to socialize...Everyone I hated was always with me, even when I was alone. They had to be, for I had to remember what and why I hated in order to remind myself to stay away from them.”

“People ask why my brother killed himself. "Why would such a gifted journalist, whose works have won all the prizes in the world, do such a thing?" "He had so many friends, why would he want to leave them?" "But what about all he had to live for?" In a short space of time, I had a drawerful of articles wirtten by reporters pondering the death of one who, like them, made a living out of trying to sort out the truth, separating fact from conjecture. They were hell-bent on making sense out of this event.When they phoned, I told them they were going to fail. I told them that the problem with suicide is that it is a senseless event. There is no why.But of course that's wrong. There are numerous whys, though it's almost impossible, or unlikely that any single one of them is "the answer" that people want to hear.”