“or is that too straightforward a statement, have I been insuffi­ciently artful in encoding my sentiments...in camouflaging them for esthetic effect. well, too fucking bad...my life has convinced me of few things, but the absoluteness of the negative is one of them... light bends, it diffracts, it scatters, but darkness fucking endures... it is what remains when the strayed-in rays and scintillas have long disappeared... it is the fundament, the ground... and I am one who can tell you this: behold my black body..”

“I tell these stories because I have lied about my life to people who have been kind to me and I am tired of lying. I tell it because I don't want people to think that I have fucked up my life over and over just because I was in a bad mood.”

“Well, I was done hiding, hating, or apologizing for the parts of me I hadn't chosen and couldn't change. If some people had a problem with my differences, that was just too fucking bad for them.”

“I have been praying, too, for the first time in my life. That parson, Tugwell, he helped me see - not the error of my ways, for I knew them all to well already - but what was wanting in me. I am far from perfect, I know, but I am changed and changing still”

“I don’t want people to matter to me too much. Sometimes it hurts too much to think about them. Ones you love who don’t love you, ones who are dead or hate you, ones who you think about but never get to be with. I like people but when I get too close, it fucks me up and I can’t get things done.”

“You can capture this body of mine, take away my freedom and enslave me. You may even have the power to capture my soul and sentence me to the realm of eternal darkness. But my dreams you cannot touch. They are my will―the very essence of who I am. In them I laugh. In them I cry. In them I love. And in them.....I live.My dreams are untouchable and unceasing.”