“I am wonderful fun to talk to. I’m a consummate professional. People leave my parlor in states. You are here. It’s conversation-time. Shall we discuss Byzantine erotica?”

“I’m not good at talking. Can’t I just nod my way through a conversation? It’s better than nodding off.”

“I’m over here in my unit, isolated and alone, eating my terrible tasting food, and I have to look over at that. That looks like the most fun I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and it’s B.S. - excuse my language. I’m just saying that I wash and dry; I’m like a single mother. Look, we all know home-ec is a joke—no offense—it’s just that everyone takes this class to get an A, and it’s bullshit—and I’m sorry. I’m not putting down your profession, but it’s just the way I feel. I don’t want to sit here, all by myself, cooking this shitty food—no offense—and I just think that I don’t need to cook tiramisu. When am I gonna need to cook tiramisu? Am I going to be a chef? No. There’s three weeks left of school, give me a fuckin’ break! I’m sorry for cursing.”

“But I was not quite with him in my thoughts, and I wonder whether that is how we got to be after living alone for a long time, that in the middle of a train of thought we start talking outloud, that the difference between talking and not talking is slowly wiped out, that the unending, inner conversations we carry on with ourselves merges with the one we have with the few people we still see, and when you live alone for too long the line which divides the one form the other becomes vague, and you do not notice when you cross that line. Is this how my future looks?”

“It’s more that I’m afraid of time. And not having enough of it. Time to figure out who I’m supposed to be… to find my place in the world before I have to leave it. I’m afraid of what I’ll miss.”

“I like talking about people who don't have any power and it seems like some of the least powerful people in the United States are the migrant workers who come and do our work and don't have any rights as a result. And yet we still invite them to come here, and at the same time ask them to leave.”