“In my life, water has had the character of punctuation.”

“curls lip and sways clutching a whisky sour. "JR, you bastard!”

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”

“It is the present living generation that gives character and spirit to the next. Hence the paramount importance of accomplished and energetic teachers in forming the taste the manners and the character of the coming age.”

“For it wasn't the secret--the secret that wasn't a secret anyway--that led to austerity in our lives. It was the austerity that led to the secret. And what I had been marked by, probably most of all, was the austerity. It had made secrets in my life too. Or silences, anyway, that became secrets. That became lies.”

“I wrenched open the windows. I stood while the cold air poured around my face like dark water, as if I was a rock and it was chiselling me into a new shape.”

“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself”