“I wish I hadn't cried about a girl a couple of months ago so I would have more tears for this moment, this moment that rips up the term reality, forever un-marries it from the word boring. I am also, I have to admit, terrified, because I have always lived in this one world, and I am leaving it, right now in this moment, for a whole different one. I imagine it's a lot how leaving for college feels, if you were going to college in Atlantis.”

“Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.”

“Now, feel free to call me what I am-call me a corpse, call me dead, call me a killer if you want. I've killed people in battle, I'll admit. But don't call me what I'm not. I am not a freak, and I am not a cannibal, and-"I would have adeed, I'm not a monster, if it hadn't at that moment hit me that I was going all self-righteous on a girl whose world I had just turned upside down.Smooth, Bram. When will you learn to shut up?”

“The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words ofsome loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures--solitude, books and imagination--outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.”

“If I never have anything from him except this one moment I am going to take it. Take it now, or drown in regret later.”

“I am not proud of this moment. It is not one I share with others often, and rarely have I done so. It was hard to live through then. And it is difficult to walk through now, 22+ years later. But this is the moment that lay to rest every doubt about whether or not I had a “problem.”