“I make no excuse for what happened. Drunkenness is never more than a symptom, not an absolute cause, and I realize that it would be wrong of me to try to defend myself. Nevertheless, there is at least the possibility of an explanation.”

“I never defended myself. Not once. I never said, "Excuse me? What gives you the right to insult and demean me?" I let them steal my dignity.”

“I really do believe that there are those who would like and trust me better if they saw me weeping into a whisky, making a fool of myself, getting aggressive, maudlin and drunkenly out of control. I have never found those states in others anything other than tiring, awkward, embarrassing and fantastically dull, but I am quite sure that people would cherish a view of me in that condition at least once in a while.”

“People cannot handle prejudice because they try to deal with the symptom. Prejudice is the symptom, wrong assumptions are the cause.'Prejudice is the daughter of assumption.”

“I have been granted the terrible privilege of deciding what would have happened with no one left to contradict me. And maybe I am absolutely wrong.”

“And as I stood there in the hallway―alone―trying to understand what had just happened and why, I realized the truth: I wasn't worth an explanation―not even a reaction. Not in your eyes.”