Girlfriend in a Coma

didn't realize then that so much of being adult is reconciling ourselves with the awkwardness and strangeness of our ownfeelings. Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience

She had the extra pulse of beauty people have when they know they’re being fondly admired.

often a quiet life of loneliness can be its own Great Experience.

we both felt safe, as if we were a complete solar system unto ourselves, dangling in the sky, warm heated planets inside a universe of stars.

Why does life feel so long and so short at the same time?

Karen didn't "contribute" anything to society, but how many people really do?

What if we were to die right there? What had our lives been? What had our ambitions been? What had we been seeking? Money? No—none of us seemed financially motivated. Happiness? We were so young that we didn't even know what unhappiness could be. Freedom? Perhaps. An overriding principle of our lives then was that infinite freedom creates a society of unique, fascinating individuals. Failure at this would mean failure of our societal duty. We were young; obviously we wanted meaning from life. I felt a craving for duty, but to what?

Hamilton and I were the ones without goals. "Imagine you're a forty-year-old, Richard," Hamilton said to me around this time, while working as a salesman at a Radio Shack in Lynn Valley, "and suddenly somebody comes up to you saying, 'Hi, I'd like you to meet Kevin. Kevin is eighteen and will be making all of your career decisions for you.' I'd be flipped out. Wouldn't you? But that's what life is all about—some eighteen-year-old kid making your big decisions for you that stick for a lifetime." He shuddered.

Destiny is what we work toward. The future doesn't exist yet. Fate is for losers.