“The kind of person that thanks another person never survives. Have you learned nothing?”

“I'm this superphilosophical kind of person. Stuck in a prison of abstract ideas and overpowering emotions, I have this personality that makes it really hard to survive.”

“Learning another language is like becoming another person.”

“To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.”

“Even personal tastes are learned, in the matrix of a culture or a subculture in which we grow up, by very much the same kind of process by which we learn our common values. Purely personal tastes, indeed, can only survive in a culture which tolerates them, that is, which has a common value that private tastes of certain kinds should be allowed.”

“J’aurais dû être plus gentille—I should have been more kind. That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person. You will never think that.”

“One can't be kind to one person and cruel to another.”

“One of the things I'd learned… was how to take a compliment. Just say, "Thank you." It's the only response a confident person can make.”

“When you are older, you will learn that the first and foremost thing which any ordinary person does is nothing.”

“Never hesitate to imitate another writer - every person learning a craft or an art needs models. Eventually you'll find your own voice and will shed the skin of the writer you imitated.”