Hector Heinzmann

“Being a failed teenager is not a crime, but a predicament and a secret crucible. It is a fun-house mirror where distortion and mystification led to the bitter reflection that sometimes ripens into self knowledge. Time is the only ally of the humiliated teenager, who eventually discovers the golden boy of the senior class is a bloated, bald drunk at the twentieth reunion, and that the homecoming queen married a wife-beater and philanderer and died in a drug rehabilitation center before she was thirty. The prince of acne rallied in college and is now head of neurology, and the homeliest girl blossoms in her twenties, marries the chief financial officer of a national bank, and attends her reunion as president of the Junior League. But since a teenager is denied a crystal ball that will predict the future, there is a forced march quality to this unspeakable rite of passage. It is an unforgivable crime for teenagers not to be able to absolve themselves for being ridiculous creatures at the most hazardous time of their lives.”
― Pat Conroy, South of Broad

“But humans have been given the ability to think. That is what makes us learn and grow. It is also what gives us the knowledge that cooperation and understanding are necessary for our own survival, and that has led to empathy and compassion, but there’s another side to those kind of feelings. The empathy and compassion we feel for our own kind is sometimes extended to the rest of the living things on the earth. If we allowed it to keep us from killing a deer, or other animals, we would not live long. The desire to live is the stronger feeling, so we learn to be compassionate selectively. We find ways to close our minds. We limit our sense of empathy.”
― Jean M. Auel, The Shelters of Stone

“Mom, please don't use 'the happy voice.' It reminds me of the day Tinkles died."
"Who was Tinkles?" Sue asked around a mouthful of pancake.
"My cat. When I was five, Tinkles died choking on a mouse that was a bit ambitious for a kitten to eat."
"It was terribly traumatic for Aurelia because it was the first time she'd experienced loss." 
"What did you do to help her get through it?" 
Rosalind smiled at Mother Guardian. "Well, after a good cry, we performed an autopsy."
Aurelia reached for her mother's hand. "I never thanked you for that.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.”
― Edwin Abbott Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions