It's so horribly, desperately easy to fail at being grown-up.
Which is why places like this always have to pin their hopes for the future on young people. They're the only ones who don't remember that things actually used to be better. That can be a blessing.
He knows it's only a game. But we're a town in the middle of the forest. We've got no tourism, no mine, no high-tech industry. We've got darkness, cold and unemployment.
At the end of your career you're trying to find a point to it all, and at the start of it you're looking for a purpose.
Deep down, in memories that we might prefer to suppress even from ourselves, a lot of us know that the difference between us and that man on the bridge is smaller than we might wish.
This sport demands only one thing from you. Your all.
Our hearts are bars of soap that we keep losing hold of; the moment we relax, they drift off and fall in love and get broken, all in the wink of an eye.
She loves everything about her guitar – its weight against her body, the way the wood responds when her fingertips tap it, the strings that cut hard against her skin. The simple notes, the gentle riffs – it's all a wonderful game to her.
Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks.
Some people want to decide for themselves how happy they are.
There's such an unbelievable amount that we're all supposed to be able to cope with these days. You're supposed to have a job, and somewhere to live, and a family, and you're supposed to pay taxes and have clean underwear and remember the password to your damn Wi-Fi.
Anyone can nurture a myth about their life if they have enough manure.
Never trust people who don't have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.
If you are honest, people may deceive you. Be honest anyway.
He went through life with his hands firmly shoved into his pockets. She danced.
But if anyone had asked, he would have told them that he never lived before he met her. And not after either.
You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again. Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it’s never the same as it was then.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfishness. Be kind anyway. All the good you do today will be forgotten by others tomorrow. Do good anyway.
We don't have a plan, we just do our best to get through the day, because there'll be another one coming along tomorrow.
We tried keeping tropical fish once and they all died. And we really don't know more about children than tropical fish, so the responsibility frightens the life out of us each morning.
The town wakes early, like it does every day; small towns need a head start if they're going to have any chance in the world.
Sometimes it hurts, it really hurts, for no other reason than the fact that our skin doesn't feel like it's ours.
It's so hard to find the words when all you really want to say is: 'I can see you're hurting.