“This is what I love to do: I love to run through a field of wet grass that has not been mowed recently, I love to run, keeping my snout low to the ground so the grass and the sparkles of water cover my face. I imagine myself as a vacuum cleaner, sucking in all the smells. all the life, a spear of summer grass. It reminds me of my childhood, back on the farm in Spangle, where there was no rain but there was grass, there were fields, and I ran. ~ p208”

“I had always wanted to love Eve as Denny loved her, but I never had because I was afraid. She was my rain. She was my unpredictable element. She was my fear. But a racer should not be afraid of the rain; a racer should embrace the rain. I, alone, could manifest a change around me. By changing my mood, my energy, I allowed Eve to regard me differently. And while I cannot say that I am a master of my own destiny, I can say that I have experienced a glimpse of mastery, and I know what I have to work toward.”

“When I return to the world, I will be a man. I will walk among you. I will lick my lips with my small, dexterous tongue. I will shake hands with other men, grasping firmly with my opposable thumbs. And I will teach all people that I know. And when I see a man or a woman or a child in trouble, I will extend my hand, both metaphorically and physically. I will offer my hand. To him. To her. To you. To the world. I will be a good citizen, a good partner in the endeavour of life that we all share.”

“In the emptiness that was all around me, I noticed an old tennis ball in the plantings; I picked it up and dropped it at Zoë’s feet. I didn’t know what I was doing, if I had a specific intention. Was I trying to lighten the mood? I don’t know, but I felt I had to do something. So there the ball bounced to a stop at her bare feet.She looked down at the ball but did nothing with it.Maxwell noticed what I had done, and he noticed Zoë’s lack of reaction. He picked up the ball and, with a mighty heave, threw it so far into the woods behind the house that I lost sight of it and could only barely hear it crash through the leaves of bushes on its way back to earth. It was quite an impressive toss, the pale tennis ball sailing through the air against the clear blue sky. What amount of psychic pain was expended on that ball, I had no idea.”

“If you taught me to read and provided for me the same computer system as someone has provided for Stephen Hawking, I, too, would write great books. And yet you don't teach me to read, and you don't give me a computer stick I can push around with my nose to point at the next letter I wish typed. So whose fault is it that I am what I am?”

“I know the truth, and I will tell you now: He was admired, loved, cheered, honored, respected. In life as well as in death. A great man, he is. A great man, he was. A great man he will be. He died that day because his body had served its purpose. His soul had done what it came to do, learned what it came to learn, and then was free to leave. And I knew, as Denny sped me toward the doctor who would fix me, that if I had already accomplished what I set out to accomplish here on earth, if I had already learned what I was meant to learn, I would have left the curb one second later than I had, and I would have been killed instantly by that car. But I was not killed. Because I was not finished. I still had work to do.”

“I was upset, sad, angry - something! I needed to do something! I needed to feel myself, understand myself and this horrible world we are all trapped in, where bugs and tumors and viruses worm their way into our brains and lay their putrid eggs that hatch and eat us alive from the inside out.”