“I once overheard someone telling someone else "Don't confuse kindness with something else." Even though this was not directed at me, I took heed and never hedged my bets.”

“Why don't you just put me down for a couple of boxes of cookies and go earn your next patch bothering someone else." - Jayke Wolff”

“He comes down next to me, and when I hold out my hand, he takes it. Our fingers lace together. And in that feeling, that perfect feeling of our hands and fingers pressed together, I want to tell him everything. I want to tell him about Josh, and his sister, Emily. I want to tell him about tall, crazy Gert. I want to tell him about bridges and funerals, and most of all, maps. More than anything else, I want to tell him about myself. I want to tell him that I know what things look like from above now. There's so much I want to tell him, because I know he'll understand.”

“You’re never going to be strong by making someone else weak.”

“I thought instead of a good rule for survival on Wall Street: Never agree to anything proposed on someone else's boat or you'll regret in in the morning.”

“These golf people seem unnaturally obsessed. They dress kind of funny too, and it's become a running joke for Gretchen and I to e-mail the most ridiculous golfing pictures back and forth to each other. Sometimes she adds hysterical captions. She never puts them on PitchBitch, though. We can't threaten the gravy train.”

“I never even thought to look for other—oof!” Lunging forward I found myself tripping right over a nice big chunk of nothing. I stumbled forward; my body surged with the heat of concentrated humiliation. Finally I regained my footing and looked awkwardly up at Joel. “Ha,” I said as a failed effort to laugh at myself. With no hesitation Joel turned around and walked over to the spot that I’d tripped. He bent down and took a firm grip on an armful of thin air. He heaved it up into his arms and walked it over to the edge of the sidewalk and tossed it out of the way. He brushed off his hands with vigor and said, “Don’t want anyone else tripping over that invisible log.”