“Growing up, I'd already decided I wanted to be a beatnik. A Bohemian poet, I thought. Or a musician. Maybe an artist. I'd dress in black turtlenecks and smoke Gitanes. I'd listen to cool jazz in clubs, getting up to read devastating truths from my notebook, leaning against the microphone, cigarette dangling from my hand.”

“If my name were Nubby Blues, I wouldn't be a jazz musician, I'd be a disabled Vietnam vet on welfare.”

“But give up my business? The same business I'd built from the ground up with my own two hands and designer Louis Vuittons? The same business for which I'd sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears? Well, maybe not sweat and tears, but there was blood. Lots of blood. Give it up? Not likely. Besides, what else would I do? I totally should've gone to Hogwarts when I had the chance.”

“If I could live anywhere, I'd live up in the Mountains where it's cool, and far away from everything. I'd live like a hermit and write like a fiend.”

“If I was a flower growing wild and freeAll I'd want is you to be my sweet honey bee.And if I was a tree growing tall and greeenAll I'd want is you to shade me and be my leaves”

“I felt the pulse behind the fire raging now in my chest and realized that I'd found my heart again, just in time to wish I never had. To wish that I'd embraced the blackness while I'd still had the chance. I wanted to raise my arms and claw my chest open and rip the heart from it--anything to get rid of this toture. But I could't feel my arms, couldn't move one vanished finger.”