"Train Dreams" by Denis Johnson (2002)

It is not the best of all possible worlds---today or at any time or place in the past. But the world is good enough if permeated by mutual respect.

An individual has lived a happy life if he has been given one chance at everything.

It is better to be a misfit and free than a misfit and tamed. It is better to be a misfit than not to be at all.

Having been neither a child nor a parent to anyone in particular, one may take pride in having been a free droplet on the crest of the breaking wave of the civilisation rolling in the right direction.