To pick you up, Frank, I’m going to have to put both my hands on you”, I said. “That will be alright”, he said. “Until you master the art of levitation.

Youth isn’t wasted on the young, literature is.

Things fifty years old or older are considered ‘antique.’ Anything thirty years old to fifty is called ‘vintage.’ So I’m not even close to vintage, although of course you are swiftly approaching that.” “Thanks. So what does that make you?” “I’m a child. My mother, however, is antique.” “Well, let’s not tell her that, okay?” “Why not? It’s true.” “Lots of true things aren’t polite to say.

My mother always said that the best way to connect with anybody who was a mother was to find a way to compliment her child.

With children in the house, you’re on call around the clock whether you like it or not. You don’t get the luxury of enough sleep when that was what you needed most to keep yourself from going over the edge.

If you think you’ll always let people down, that’s all you’ll ever do, I said.

From that high up, language or the lack of it didn't matter much. The swirling currents of people were way better than anything on TV. Even on cable. Except, possibly, the Armenian Channel.

If you think you'll always let people down, that's all you'll ever do, I said.

Sometimes just explaining your predicament--to a bartender, a priest, the old woman in a shift and flip-flops cleaning the lint traps in the Laundromat dryers--is all it takes to see a way out of it.

Later, Xander said, "It's not about you, you know. What Mimi hates is how her life has turned out. It isn't how she thought it would be back when she was your age and on the top of the world.