“Despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.”

“It would have been funny if I had been an observer and not a participant, an idea that gave me a disconcerting insight into gossip. As I walked beside the silent Tamara, I realized that despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.”

“Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion - which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea - you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some blood-thirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself.”

“The bottom line is, insults only hurt when they come from someone I respect.”

“Gossip is one thing, hurtful gossip is completely another, and even in high school we weren't THAT mean.”

“The bottom line was that people who leaned too heavily on someone else were setting themselves up for a terrible fall, and they had no one to blame in the end but themselves for the hurt they suffered.Cork had learned the hard way.”