“It may sound like a mess, but sometimes mess can be okay, mess can be fine. Sometimes mess is just another word for living your life as real you, not someone else's version of what they think you should be.”

“Doing what's right should be easy. It shouldn't be just another big mess like everything else.”

“And when you mess with one part of a person's life, you're not messing with just that part. When you mess with one part of a person's life, you're messing with their entire life.”

“Life is a mess, Rose said. You can fix the mess human beings make, Rose said, But you can't fix the mess being human is.”

“Writers are such phonies: they sometimes have wise insights but they don't live by them at all. That's what writers are like...you think they know something, but usually they are just messes.”

“You don’t know what goes on in anyone’s life but your own. And when you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re not messing with just that part. Unfortunately, you can’t be that precise and selective. When you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re messing with their entire life. Everything. . . affects everything.”