"His yellow eyes were half-lidded as he sang, and in that golden moment, hanging taut in the middle of an ice-covered landscape like a single bubble of summer nectar, I could see how my life could be stretched out in front of me."

"Let me dream so I can shape the world, let me dream so I can make others dream as well, but do not let me dream my days away; lest I sleep my years away too."

"There was no protection, no quota system when it came to luck. It was like that moment in math when a child learns that the odds of heads or tails is always one-in-two, no matter how many times one has flipped the coin and gotten heads. Every flip, the odds are the same. Every day, you could be unlucky all over again."

"I've been asked by lots of people, 'What happens if you do kill yourself?' They want to know about what it would be like for other people around you, like the person who would find your body, the other kids at school, whoever would have to clean up the blood, what your family holidays would be like."

"We remained talking, fighting gently or viciously for what seemed like hours, but it was only minutes or perhaps a second, because it was only a dream."

"I shuffle along, letting the current pull me, and I have the sense that I am like a rat caught in a maze of tunnels, moving endlessly toward some promise of...Of what? Light? Life? Cheese?"