The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea.

The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.

Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.

I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.

Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.

I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.

How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?

The day he came home from the hospital, he cried. I held him. I thought he would never stop.I knew that a part of him would never be the same.They cracked more than his ribs.

You can’t expect to go both ways when you’re driving on a one-way street.

It started to rain and we just sat. Sat and watched the rain in silence.

Everyone was always becoming someone else.Sometimes, when you were older, you became someone younger. And me, I felt old. How can aguy who’s about to turn seventeen feel old?

The opposite of hope is despair, and when we despair, it is because we feel there are no choices.

I just see myself as an object in the final image. I know I'm experiencing it when I'm there working on it. I'm there to be worked with, as anything else that I work with.

You never observe a great intellectual movement in Europe in which the Jews do NOT greatly participate. The first Jesuits were Jews.

I hate England and its hopelessness. I hate [Arnold] Bennett's resignation. Tragedy ought really to be a great big kick at misery.

She walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her.

You shall love your neighbour With your crooked heart, It says so much about love and brokenness -- it's perfect.

Do you have it on your person?" my father asked. "Jesus" I replied. "My person has it in her purse.

I love hidden things. When you buy something with quality, you like the inside to be as beautiful as the outside. Nobody's going to see it, but you know it's there.

If you want to talk to me after the show, I'd be surprised.

Like the child, the creative writing student is posited as a centre of vulnerable creativity, needful of attention and authority.