“And I'm reminded just how quickly life can change.”

“You know the hurt is coming, but there's this reprieve just long enough to get your hopes up, to make you think that maybe, just maybe, this time you dodged it. But then it comes anyway.”

“I can't help wondering if love can really be blamed for the things we do to ourselves.”

“You can't really know who you are unless you understand where you came from.”

“Something about the occasion makes me think I'm at my own wake. Sitting for a picture is morbid business. A portrait doesn't begin to mean anything until the subject is dead. This is the whole point. We're doing this to create a kind of sentimental past for people in the decades to come. It's their past, their history we're inventing here. And it's not how I look now that matters. It's how I'll look in twenty-five years as clothing and faces change, as photographs change. The deeper I pass into death, the more powerful my picture becomes. Isn't this why picture-taking is so ceremonial? It's like a wake. And I'm the actor made up for the laying-out.”

“The game doesn't change the way you sleep or wash your face or chew your food. It changes nothing but your life.”

“I'm not reclusive at all. Just private.”