“I can't see how I'll make it a year this way," he said."It seems impossible, I know. But when we're old and doddering, this year will seem like a blink.”

“My voice softens. 'How old are you?''I'll be eleven next year.'I grin. 'So you're ten years old?'He crosses his arms. Frowns. 'I'll be twelve in two years.'I think I already love this kid.”

“I was nineteen years five months old when I fell in love for the first time. This seemed to me a profound, advanced age; never can we anticipate being older than we are, or wiser; if we're exhausted, it's impossible to anticipate being strong; as, in the grip of a dream, we rarely understand that we're dreaming, and will escape by the simplest of methods, opening our eyes.”

“When days seem like years and years feel like days.”

“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.”

“I can go years thinking that it seems impossible that I will ever satisfy that appetite again and then it is easy to satisfy and no one notices or cares, nor does it make me happy, when loneliness surrounds me like water I've already drowned in without dying.”