12. There will come a day, much quicker than your parents would wish, when you will no longer be comfortable living at home. You will want to move out and establish a home of your own. After that time, your mother and father will be more like your friends than your parents. And someday, if they live long enough, you will be more like a parent to them than a son or daughter.

18. Your life is before you. Be careful of the choices you make now that you could regret later. This regret is the subject of an old poem whose author has been forgotten. I hope you’ll never have reason to apply it to yourself. Across the fields of yesterday, He sometimes comes to me A little lad just back from play— The boy I used to be. He looks at me so wistfully When once he’s crept within; It is as if he hoped to see The man I might have been.

A guy never has a right to force a woman to have sex with him under any circumstances. She should be able to say no at any point, and he must honor that denial. It is criminal that so many girls and women are raped today. Fully 60 percent of all females who lose their virginity before age fifteen say that their first sexual experience was forced! That is a tragedy with far-reaching consequences.

38. “A wet bird never flies at night.” (My grandfather said that to me when I was a child and warned me not to forget it. I remember his words but never did figure out what he meant!)