“I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn’t. I don’t blame him. If I was him I’d have the same opinion about me that he does.”

And perhaps beyond those shrouded swells another man did walk with another child on the dead gray sands. Slept but a sea apart on another beach among the bitter ashes of the world or stood in their rags lost to the same indifferent sun.

How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?

You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.

Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.

Somewhere in the world is the most invincible man. Just as somewhere is the most vulnerable.

It’s not about knowing who you are. It’s about thinkin you got there without takin anything with you. Your notions about startin over. or anybody’s. You dont start over. That’s what it’s about. Every step you take is forever. You can’t make it go away. None of it.

He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activites in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they’d have no heart to start at all.

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.

I got what I needed instead of what I wanted and that’s just about the best kind of luck you can have.

Words pale and lose their savor while pain is always new.

Ever dumb thing I ever done in my life there was a decision I made before that got me into it. It was never the dumb thing. It was always some choice I’d made before it.

But there are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse.

He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.

I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.

The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

It is personal. That’s what an education does. It makes the world personal.

Small-minded people blame others. Average people blame themselves. The wise see all blame as foolishness.

Don’t blame me, love made me crazy.

Even as a solid rock is unshaken by the wind, so are the wise unshaken by praise or blame.

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

You can spend a lot of time placing blame on others when you’re the only one standing in your way.

Blaming things on the past does not make them better.

I used to blame everything outside of me for my lack of progress until I found that my problem was inside.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are.