“I resigned myself to the fact that the only way I would get Mishrani out of the movement was to deprogram her. It was a terrifying prospect. There were very real risks that it could go wrong and I could wind up in jail, or worse, Mishrani could end up hating me for the rest of her life.There was no way around it, though. It was a thing that needed doing, and I was just the guy to do it.”

“It kind of makes me wish that the worst thing that will ever happen to me would just hurry up and happen already. That way I could live the rest of my life in bliss, if only because I know how much worse things could be.”

“Marie is a person whose life experiences, though different from most, have never robbed her of her humanity. At the very depth of her psychosis, she could touch her own wish for sanity even though this touch required every bit of her will to live. From a curled-up position of catatonic silence on her hospital bed, she could still see herself: 'I looked at myself and said, 'No more. I can't go on this way anymore...if I ever want to get out of here, if I ever want to get better" (xiii)”

“I would like to be soft and warm. I would be terrified to be that way. I could be hurt if I were soft and warm. I could be hurt by something other than myself. It is harder to be soft than it is to be hard. I could be hurt by something other than myself.”

“When things are at their blackest, I say to myself, 'Cheer up, things could be worse.' And sure enough, they get worse.”

“When I was growing up, no one could get away with telling me I couldn't do something "because you're a girl." In fact, if someone wanted me not to do something, that was the worst thing they could say: It practically guaranteed I'd run out and try to do it.”