“I have scavenged for ways to put down roots here. I am perfroming the precise rituals required. Still, I have no idea how to claim the promised land, to gain any semblance of acceptance among its people. And I realize this is probably how I will always live--slinking around the margins--even on my own property.”

“You have no idea how damaged I am and honestly, I don’t even understand why you are still here.”

“Even now I cannot believe that I am still alive and writing this account of the emperor's death. I put my hands to my eyes, wondering if what I am relating here is not all a dream - or maybe it is not a dream: perhaps it is a delusion and I am mad, the victim of some extraordinary and monstrous hallucination. How comes it that when he is dead I am still numbered among the living?”

“You have not realized how I have developed. I was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. I have new passions new thoughts new ideas. I am different but you must not like me less. I am changed but you must always be my friend.”

“I am my own person caoable of making my own decisions and choosing powerfully how i live. I appreciate and respect what others have to say but ultimately I choose how I live my life.”

“And that day, I probably walked right by them out of class, not really knowing either of them or having any idea who they'd end up being to me, but I can imagine it so accurately because I was then (and I guess I am still) in my own world of misreading people, reaching out to them in an awkward, overplanned way that blows up big-time, then retreating back in to my just-me existence, while they go around telling anyone who will listen what a tard I am.”