A man on the run finds compassion or loveor even pretended innocence his greatest source of danger.

I’d have much rather gotten dragged into someone else’s fight than face what was waiting for me. Other people’s emotional pain, no matter how painful, is so much less painful than your own.

Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care... -Wintergirls

Always listen to yourself... It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention.

Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark.

Advertising seemed almost natural to me because it was a business where you had to inform, persuade and educate. And so from being a junior copywriter to being the creative director of one of the largest advertising agencies in the country took me 4.5 years, which is, well, a fairly spectacular rise.