“Like the culture that created me, I am receding into the past at a rate of knots. Soon I'll need a whole row of footnotes if anybody under thirty-five is going to comprehend the least thing I say.”

“I'm through with you. Yes, I am going to put you down. From now on, I am my own God. I am going to live by the rules I se for myself. I'll discard everything I was once taught about you. Then I'll be you. I'll be my own God, living my life as I see fit. Not as Mr. Charlie says I should live it, or Mama or anybody else. I shall do as I want in this society that apparently wasn't meant for me and my kind. If you are getting angry because I am talking to you like this, then just kill me, leave me here in this graveyard dead. Maybe thats where all of us belong anyway. Maybe then we wouldn't have to suffer so much. At the rate we are being killed now, we'll all be soon dead anyway.”

“The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too soon needed ten, then thirty, thena full minute...”

“In Libya, you are made aware the whole time of the abandonment of things, the material leftovers of receding cultures”

“I am running a bit late. But all right, if I’m going to be late, I should be at least thirty minutes late. There’s something small-minded about running just five minutes late, don’t you think?”

“I am somebody. I am me. And I don't need anybody to make me somebody.”