Even the kids, behind the slice of streetscape floating in the glass, had mastered the art of pretending not to see.

As if it were possible for one person to care about another and still treat him or her like this.

But what if time worked the other way around?What if what his adolescent self had felt then was the ghost of his present one, sitting here on a sagging bench, beckoning him into his future?

And didn't time always slow, anyway, the closer you came to what you wanted?

There is no such thing as a perfect phrase, or a private language, and . . . time only runs the one way.

Some people think the real them is whoever they are when they're not around other people.

It's like Charlie's dreamed everything he lived through here.

Everything's always changing, Charlie. We become who we are. The mask melts into the face.

Three’s all you need to change the world. Look at the Bolsheviks, or the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

William, an artist is someone who combines a desperate need to be understood with the fiercest love of privacy-

No amount of art, even of the Great American variety, can elevate you above, or insulate you from, the divisions, the cataclysms, of ordinary life.

Indeed, she often wondered if she were dead, or dying from the inside out, and that was the root of her calm, the reason she could surrender her character.

The more silent you are at bed during times of crisis, the more are the chances of an amicable, dignified and a not so counterproductive interchange of romantic exuberance.

you are only what you are when no one is watching.

The United States is not a nation to which peace is a necessity.

I got my dog back, in African-American language, your dog means your passion, your fire.

I like going to the gym every day.

Love can make the difference-love generously given in childhood and reaching through the awkward years of youth . . . and encouragement that is quick to compliment and slow to criticize.

The Bible is a stream of running water, where alike the elephant may swim, and the lamb walk without losing its feet.

Hunger is a powerful incentive to introspection.