“Astley comes to my side. "Are you well?" "No," I tell him, voice hoarse. "I am not well. I am broken inside. I am broken almost all-the-way deep, and I don't know...I don't know if I can ever be unbroken, let alone well again”.”

“I know the well of my maternal incompetence is deep but I am determined to siphon up a calm and breathing hope for him.”

“I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. However, I don't know beans about my disease, and I am not sure what is bothering me. I don't treat it and never have, though I respect medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, let's say sufficiently so to respect medicine. (I am educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, I refuse to treat it out of spite. You probably will not understand that. Well, but I understand it. Of course I can't explain to you just whom I am annoying in this case by my spite. I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "get even" with the doctors by not consulting them. I know better than anyone that I thereby injure only myself and no one else. But still, if I don't treat it, its is out of spite. My liver is bad, well then-- let it get even worse!”

“Well you should care. About my past, I mean. Because who I am today is based on who I was, and what happened to me. You are in love with who you think I am, not the real me. Not the me who is broken inside.”

“Well, I am the man of your dreams. You just don't know it yet.”

“I tell him all that I can without telling him the truth. That my heart is broken, that I can't figure out where my father fits in my story anymore, that I am afraid I will never see him again, and that I am so very tired of loving men I cannot trust.”