“Who knows what I want to do? Who knows what anyone wants to do? How can you be sure about something like that? Isn't it all a question of brain chemistry, signals going back and forth, electrical energy in the cortex? How do you know whether something is really what you want to do or just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain? Some minor little activity takes place somewhere in this unimportant place in one of the brain hemispheres and suddenly I want to go to Montana or I don't want to go to Montana. How do I know I really want to go and it isn't just some neurons firing or something? Maybe it's just an accidental flash in the medulla and suddenly there I am in Montana and I find out I really didn't want to go there in the first place. I can't control what happens in my brain, so how can I be sure what I want to do ten seconds from now, much less Montana next summer? It's all this activity in the brain and you don't know what's you as a person and what's some neuron that just happens to fire or just happens to misfire.”

“I made promises to you that I'm not sure I can keep. None of it has anything to do with you. It's just that I don't know what to do now. You must be thinking what a rotten person I am. Well, believe me, I'm thinking the same thing. I don't know how this happened or why. Maybe I can get over it. Do you think you can wait—because I don't want you to stop loving me. I keep remembering us and how it was. I don't want to hurt you … not ever …”

“So, it's not gonna be easy. It's gonna be really hard. We're gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, you and me, every day. Will you do something for me, please? Just picture your life for me? Thirty years from now, forty years from now? What's it look like? If it's with him- go. Go! I lost you once, I think I can do it again, if I thought that's what you really wanted. But don't you take the easy way out.”

“If you don't want her to go, you should say it. Those jerks who can't say a word no matter how much time passes ... I just don't get them. If they're doing whatever the hell they want ... then you should do what you want too. I hate those jerks who fool themselves into thinking that just because they clam up, nobody knows what's going on with them!!”

“What do you want to know, Eden? Do you want to know how upset I am that you are not going to be around anymore, that I'm going to have to disappear out of your life completely? Would you like to know how scared I am that I won't be able to protect you anymore? Maybe you want to know how terrifying it is that you are choosing to hand yourself over to the monarchy; that you are going willingly to be slaughtered and I get absolutely no say in the matter. Or maybe you wan to know how hurt I am. Is that what you want to know?”

“You know how sometimes you can be going along and do something or say something, and suddenly you *know* yourself? I mean, it's like you're looking at somebody else, and it's just so fucking clear you want to hit something.”