If you see people as enemies or obstacles or traps, you will be at constant war with them and with yourself. Whereas if you choose to see people as puzzles, and if you see yourself as a puzzle, the you will be constantly delighted, because eventually, if you dig deep enough into anybody, if you really look under the hood of someone's life, you will find something familiar.

Sometimes a crisis is not really a crisis at all - just a new beginning. Because one thing she's learned through all this is that if a new beginning is really new, it will feel like a crisis. Any real change should make you feel, at first, afraid. If you're not afraid of it, then it's not real change.

The things you love the most will one day hurt you the worst

There is not one true self hidden by many false ones. Rather, there is one true self hidden by many other true ones.

In this other life, she wouldn't have to worry so much. She could say anything, do anything, kiss boys and not worry about her reputation, watch movies with abandon, stop obsessing about tests or homework, shower with the other girls, wear far-out clothes and sit at the hippie table for kicks. In this other more interesting life, Faye would live consequence-free, and it seemed beautiful and lovely and, as soon as she thought about it objectively for ten seconds, ridiculous. Totally beyond her reach.

There is no greater ache than this: guilt and regret in equal measure.

You never even decided your life would be this way - it's simply the way life has become. You've been carved out by the things that have happened to you.

There are things inside you that you prefer to ignore. There is a molten mass of anguish and self-pity way deep inside you and you keep it pressed down there by never looking at it or acknowledging it.

You'd be amazed at the facts people are willing to set aside to believe that life is, indeed, great.

Beyond everything else, she loves this: how swiftly things can strike her - music, people, life - how quickly they can suprise her, all of sudden, like a punch.