It was true. Heard it on Cronkite.

She’d decided that about eighty percent of what you believe about yourself when you’re twenty turns out to be wrong. The problem is you don’t know what your small true part is until much later.

People love each other for many reasons, not all of them good [...]. They love each other because it's easy. Or because they're used to it. Or because they've given up. Or because they're scared.

He’s like the most dangerous species of American there is: heterosexual white male who didn’t get what he wanted.

And I told you to bring nine toys, she said. you bought eight. Next time try to pay more attention. And the disappointment in her voice made him cry even harder, so hard that he couldn't talk and thus he couldn't tell her that he put eight toys in the wagon because the ninth toy was the wagon itself.

They turned on the television and saw some news story about another goddamn humanitarian crisis, another goddamn civil war in some godforsaken place, and saw images of wounded people or starving children and felt a bright, bitter anger at the children for invading and ruining the only moments of relaxation and "me time" the neighbors had all day. The neighbors would get a little indignant here, about how their own lives were hard too, and yet nobody heard them complaining about it. everyone had problems - why couldn't they just quietly deal with them? On their own? With a bit of self-respect? Why did they have to get everyone else involved? It's not like the neighbors could do anything. It's not like civil wars were their fault.