"You really need stitches,' she tells me.'Or you're going to have a scar.' I try not to laugh. Stitches aren't going to help. They fix skin, cuts, wounds, heal stuff on the outside. Everything broken with me is on the inside. 'I can handle scars, especially one's on the outside."

"She was different. She liked hearing it, because she wanted to recall just enough of it to remember that she never wanted to go back to being the person she'd been before."

"You can map out a fight plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it may not go the way you planned, and you're down to your reflexes - that means your [preparation:]. That's where your roadwork shows. If you cheated on that in the dark of the morning, well, you're going to get found out now, under the bright lights."

"This man was being kept alive by those machines. Someone was trying to help him. They were just trying to help. All the horrible things we've seen are just people trying to help, aren't they? To make the work a little easier, and the world a little easier for people to live in. And it turned into a nightmare."

"For if you try to forget yourself, force your heart and thoughts to become indifferent to the sight before you and take share of that entity which seems like one of the courses of the meal."