“...after all, who isn't a survivor from the wreck of childhood?”

“I won't waste your time with the injuries of my childhood, with my loneliness, or the fear and sadness of the years I spent inside the bitter capsule of my parents' marriage, under the reign of my father's rage, after all, who isn't a survivor from the wreck of a childhood? I have no desire to describe mine; I only want to say that in order to survive the dark and often terrifying passage of my life I came to believe certain things about myself.”

“I'm just a survivor from the train wreck of the modern world.”

“Everybody who is alive is a survivor, and everybody who is dead isn't," I said."So everybody alive must have the Survivor's Syndrome. It's that or death. I am so damn sick of people telling me proudly that they are survivors!”

“Childhood, after all, is the first precious coin that poverty steals from a child.”

“After all, it was never Darnay he quoted, only Sydney, drunk and wrecked and dissipated. Sydney, who died for love.”