Happily we run away from even the brightest and best things in our lives, because we are curious about what else is out there. And what else is out there? just more of the same, whichever way you look. Whichever way you turn, its the same life you're facing. It's the same life that's facing you.

Miles said early on that we must always put the other one first, and that if we both do this, everything will be fine.

I am a blight on my own life.

This is all anyone needs to know, finally - if you can resign yourself to losing, you may win.

What is at stake here is not mere decorum but efficiency in a wide range of social relations. A society in which 'anything goes' is one in which nothing goes well

I realised that fate was a ladder on which, at the time, I could not afford to miss a single rung. To skip out on even one scene would have meant never making it to the top, although it would have been by far the easier choice.

I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn't up to me.

Break open a notebook at any point and be reminded of your own reality, because a notebook is a series of proofs that life has continuity and history, and (this is most important) that any point in your own past is still within your reach