The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.

That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack. That concentrating on anything is very hard work.

Worship your body, beauty, and sexual allure and you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.

Think of the old cliché about the mind being 'an excellent servant but a terrible master'. This, like many clichés, so lame & banal on the surface, actually expresses a great & terrible truth.

JAY: Why is a story more upfront than life?LENORE: It just seems more honest, somehow.JAY: Honest meaning closer to the truth?LENORE: I smell trap.JAY: I smell breakthrough. The truth is that there's no difference between a life and a story? But a life pretends to be something more? But it really isn't more?LENORE: I would kill for a shower.

I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there's simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away....That they walk among us. Teach our children. Inscrutable. Brass-faced.

You don’t have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness … has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I’m going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me.