“But knowing what I don’t want to do doesn’t help me figure out what I do want to do. I could do just about anything if somebody made me. But I don’t have an image of the one thing I really want to do. That’s my problem now. I can’t find the image.”

“Well, I know better what I don’t want. I don’t want somebody who’s always nagging me to be something I’m not. And I don’t want somebody who thinks she knows what’s best for me and who maneuvers around trying to get me to do things her way.” Kate frowned. “Nobody wants anyone like that. It’s like saying, ‘I don’t want someone who’ll poke me in the eye with a sharp stick.’ Forget what you don’t want. What do you want?”

“What the hell do you want from me?” “What are you trying to do to me?”“Stop! Just stop!” he spits.“Why? What else needs to be said? I think you’ve told me enough lies for a lifetime.”“No more lies,” he says angrily. “I don’t even want to talk to you anymore. I just want to hear you tell me that you don’t feel anything for me. That you want me to leave you alone and never come back. Then I’ll go. If that’s what you really want, I’ll go.”“Don’t. Please don’t say it.”“Why?”“Because I don’t want you to. I need you to come back to me. Not to help me. Or to help my father. I’m done with that. I don’t want your help. It all boils down to you. I just want you.”“I just want you.”“Okay.”

“For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.”

“What do I want? I want lots of things, just like everybody else. Problem is, we can’t really have what we want, can we?”

“I don’t want to do anything I have to do, even if I want to do it. Compulsion takes the fun out of it.”