“I don't exactly know who I thought I'd be by now, but I know I'm not that person.”

“I don't know how I know that, but I do. I can feel the beat of that truth inside me. Taste it bitter on my tongue.Sometimes, like now, I didn't think I want to know who I really am.”

“No, it can't," I say. "It's— it's the kind of thing you want to say, that you want to believe, but it isn't— I know isn't true. I thought my heart knew things, but what I thought was real turned out to be a lie, and now I don't—”

“You don't know you're wrong.""And I don't know I'm right either. That's what the matter is. Neither of us knows. I'd only be gambling on my own convictions, and — and it isn't even my own money I'd be playing games with, if you want to put it that way. ”

“I don't entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I'm me. God knows, I'm me.”

“I want to care, but I don't. I look at you and all I feel is tired. I walk through school and all I want to do is leave. I wake up in the morning and don't know why I'm here. I feel like I'm not real.”

“You know how your eyes can deceive you at times--how a group of shapes and shadows can take on a certain form and then shift into another? It wasn't really like that; there was no physical change in him, he was exactly the same as he'd always been. I knew every line of his long body and every curl on his disheveled black head. I'd just never seen him before. you know what I'm trying to say, don't you? The change is in the heart.”