“It seems I had personally laid my past to rest and when writing volume two of my book, it reminded me how I managed to get through it all back when I was young and how I made a personal choice to leave New Zealand in search of a better life.”

“I thought this pain would leave when I remembered that I had choices. But choices make it worse than ever. Choices don`t help at all, because this new person doesn`t know HOW to make choices. This new person has no skills at all.”

“I've never been afraid of ghosts. I live with them daily, after all. When I look in a mirror, my mother's eyes look back at me; my mouth curls with the smile that lured my great-grandfather to the fate that was me. No, how should I fear the touch of those vanished hands, laid on me in love unknowing? How could I be afraid of those that molded my flesh, leaving their remnants to live long past the grave?...All the time the ghosts flit past and through us, hiding in the future. We look in the mirror and see shades of other faces looking back through the years; we see the shape of memory, standing solid in an empty doorway. By blood and by choice, we make our own ghosts; we haunt ourselves.”

“Today, I will try to remember to regret the past. I will think of how many mistakes I have made throughout my life. I will say to myself, 'If only I could go back in time and make different choices, so that my life could be the way it should have been.' Then I will remind myself that I cannot.”

“When I finally accept it, the truth stings. But there's no time to dwell on it, and there are only two choices: I can remind myself about someone who is not a part of my life, or I can leave him out of my notes to save myself from going through this all over again tomorrow.”

“When I got better I realized what a rat he was, but then I had to understand the impossible complexity of his life, how he had to leave me there, sick, to get on with his wives and woes.”