“People will always try to stealyour power. When you do well, they’ll say it’s only because you’re rich and your parents are big shots. People who care about you will try to stealyour power, too, but they’ll go about it differently. When you fail at something, they’ll try to make you feel better by saying that nobody’s good ateverything, and you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. They might tell you not to feel bad about screwing up a math test because math’s hard for girls.Or they’ll say you shouldn’t worry so much about injustice in the world because you’re only one person. And even though they mean well, they’ll bemaking you less than what you can be.”

“She grabbed the bills. “Alright, you rat bastard, you win.” She stuffed the money in her back pocket.“But I’m only taking it because I’m greedy and desperate, and because there’s no door on that room so you can’t get too frisky. “Fair enough.”“I mean it, Dean. If you try to cop even one feel…”“Me? What about you?” His eyes slid over her like cool icing on hot spice cake. “How about this, double or nothing.”“What are you taking about?”“You touch me first, I keep the hundred. I touch you first, you get two hundred. Nobody touches anybody, the deals stands as is.”She thought it over, but couldn’t see any immediate loopholes other than the threat of her inner-slut emerging, and she could darn well control that little bitch. “Deal.”

“Don’t listen to what people tell you because they’ll try to bring you down. And don’t listen to yourself, either, because yourself will try to bring you down even more so than anyone else. As long as you just put all your energy into one thing, it can happen.”

“If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.”

“Take the years when you’re young – say, between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five, before you have a mortgage or kids or anything else that needs to be fed – and go balls out on intuition and follow your dreams. Dreams won’t always take you on a straight path to destiny, but they’re usually related to what your soul wants for you. They’ll force you to ask yourself the hard questions, they’ll kick your ass, and most importantly, they’ll turn you on.”

“The last one's hard. Marriage is always a balancing act, and it's never a good idea for one partner to get too big a head, but I'm afraid that's what's going to happen here. People write a lot of things about Eric Dillon's talent, and most of it's true. But nobody writes about the important things. The fact that he's a wonderful father and the best husband a woman could have. That fact that he cares about other people so much that he sometimes scares me. That doesn't mean he's perfect, of course. It's hard living with a man who's prettier than all of your girlfriends put together. But if it weren't for Eric Dillon, I wouldn't be here tonight. He loved me when I wasn't lovable, and I guess when it comes right down to it, that's pretty much what family is all about. Thank you, sweetheart.”

“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”