“I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.”

Father said conflict develops the character

Youth doesn’t need friends — it only needs crowds.

We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.

I suppose all we can really share with people is a taste for the same kinds of weather.

Nobody has ever been able to experience what they have thoroughly understood – or understand what they have experienced until they have achieved a detachment that renders them incapable of repeating the experience.

Looking for love is like asking for a new point of departure another chance in life.

I am really only myself when I’m somebody else whom I have endowed with these wonderful qualities from my imagination.

I don’t want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally.

Without you, dearest dearest I couldn’t see or hear or feel or think – or live – I love you so and I’m never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night.

People are like almanacs, Bonnie – you never can find the information you’re looking for, but the casual reading is well worth the trouble.

I love you, even if there isn’t any me, or any love, or even any life. I love you.

Why do we spend years using up our bodies to nurture our minds with experience and find our minds turning then to our exhausted bodies for solace?

We get something to do and as soon as we’ve got it, it gets us.

We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising.

Oh, we are going to be so happy away from all the things that almost got us but couldn’t quite because we were too smart for them!

Death is the only real elegance.