“Every year, many, many stupid people graduate from college. And if they can do it, so can you.”

Crying is you, plus tears.

Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.

What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.

The past feels distant, even when it’s near. The future feels assured, even when it isn’t.

Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me.

Maybe there is something you’re afraid to say, or someone you’re afraid to love, or somewhere you’re afraid to go. It’s gonna hurt. It’s gonna hurt because it matters.

It is so hard to leave, until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.

Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.

When you acknowledge that there is nothing repulsive or unforgivable or shameful about yourself, it becomes easier to be that authentic person and feel like you’re living a less performed life.

I don’t know a perfect person. I only know flawed people who are still worth loving.

I may die young, but at least I’ll die smart.

Your responsibility is not to the people you’re making the gift for, but the gift itself.

I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence

You can love someone so much but you can never love people as much as you can miss them.

You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller.

You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.

You can lead a boy to college, but you cannot make him think.

From kindergarten to college, certain teachers engaged my curiosity and motivated me to learn. While I was not the best student, their efforts left a lasting impact.

I realized that the only way to get into a good college was to be valedictorian or salutatorian. So that was my goal.

I’m more eager to have kids than I am to go back to college. I want to be a mom really badly.

Only when I began studying chemical engineering at Oregon Agricultural College did I realize that I myself might discover something new about the nature of the world.

The thing that bothered me when I was in college was that I saw myself rejecting the way of life that got me to where I was.

I should say in general the advantage of education is to better fit a man for life’s work. I would advise young men to take a college course, as a rule, but think some are just as well off with a thorough business training.

Like Ice Cube asks, “Why are more niggers in the pen than in college?” It’s easier to go to the pen than it is to go to college.