All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control. To be real.

Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It's a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actually doing it.

It wasn't about being happy or unhappy. I just didn't want to be me anymore.

It was amazing how you could get so far from where you'd planned, and yet find it was exactly were you needed to be.

I mean, it's not surprising, really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It's, like, part of you for good.

You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. It's always been yes when it comes to you.

Yeah. I mean, acknowledging is easy. Something happened or it didn't. But understanding... that's where things get sticky.

It was kind of soothing, these sounds of lives being lived all around me, for better or for worse. And there I was, in the middle of them all, newly reborn and still waiting for mine to begin.

You could just tell when a person belonged somewhere. That is something you can't fake, no matter how hard you try

I mean, it's impossible to fake anything if you've already seen the other person in a way they'd never choose for you to. You can't go back from that.

You want to take me to a movie?" I asked. "Well, not really, " he said. "What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I thought saying that might scare you off.

When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.

It would be better if you began to teach others only after you yourself have learned something.

If God made this world, then i would not want to be the God. It is full of misery and distress that it breaks my heart.

I'd been very partial to Malcolm X, particularly his self-help teachings.

Don't try to lawyer me out of common sense.

People don't enjoy salt. They enjoy what is salted. We are the salt of the earth. We do not exist for ourselves.

No one will ever believe that both your hard drive and mine crashed within a week of each other.

Good-faith re-examination of a position you've held in the past should be seen as a virtue, not a vice.

I think if I weren't married to [Barack Obama], I'd want him to be in there.

Men very seldom change, try though we will, beneath the shifts of exterior doctrine, our hearts so often remain what they were.