“My aim here was much more straightforward and objective — just to see whether I could match income to expenses, as the truly poor attempt to do every day. Besides, I've had enough unchosen encounters with poverty in my lifetime to know it's not a place you would want to visit for touristic purposes; it just smells too much like fear.”

“Friends. Strange indeed. There's just so much at risk, including my heart and mental stability - which are both still extremely fragile. I'm getting better but my heart still aches for you. I'm also having a hard time dealing with the fear. I don't want to be sad anymore. I don't want to cry, worry, or be scared anymore. I just wish I could feel free and happy again. If I can't talk to you at all, it's unbearable. If I talk to you too much, it's unbearable. It doesn't leave much. I want us both to be happy. I just want everything to be okay for you and me. I don't want anyone else to hurt. I feel like I've hurt enough for everyone. I've cried enough tears to fill everyone's bucket.”

“Don't want to see any more...feel any more. Just let me fade away...I've seen too much...too much!”

“She was crazy. I could be too. It was my greatest fear, that I'd snap one day too. Just like she had. I wanted to live life because if that day came I wanted to have lived once.”

“Some days I want to put my head in the sand. There's too much pain out there, there's too much that scares me. But I wouldn't be able to breathe with my head in the sand, and I wouldn't be able to hear or see or smell. The world is a lovely place...despite the sadness it holds for each of us, despite the terrible things we do.”

“To answer your question as honestly as I can, I've wanted since I was very little to not have to worry about money. I've never been poverty-level poor (I mean, there's been years where I've been officially beneath the poverty line, but that wasn't poverty: that was being a student and living the Student Lifestyle), but I've been in a place where you know you can't afford a better-quality food, where you can't do certain things because of money, and I'd prefer not to have those problems if I can. I sort of have troubles with money in general, with how it determines so much of our lives but with how we all try to ignore it, but I would like to be (and stay) in a place where I can pick up some new comics and games and not worry about how much they cost.This is terrible; you're asking me where I want to be in the future, what I want my life to be like, and the only thing I can tell you is "Man, all I know is I don't want to be POOR.”