“If only. Were there sadder words than these?”

“Life's most profound moments were, paradoxically, its most common ones: first breaths, and last.”

“Some rules are nothing but old habits that people are afraid to change.”

“If only people could travel as easily as words. Wouldn't that be something? If only we could be so easily revised.”

“This was Scott. This is Scott, always looking back to try to figure out how to go forward, where happiness and prosperity must surely await.”

“... while I bathed, while I tried but failed to sleep, I considered how I might become more like the women I respected and admired. Surrounded as I was by ambitious, accomplished women, I couldn't ignore the little voice in my head that said maybe I was supposed to shed halfway, and do something significant. Contribute something. Accomplish something. Choose. Be.”

“Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.”