“(...)I decided to let myself drift with the tide, to make not the least resistance to fate, no matter in what form it presented itself. Nothing that happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed but my illusions(...)”

“If there were such a thing as fate, I had been put on this earth to destroy and not to create.”

“She walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her.”

“At the moment everything was being destroyed she had created that which was most difficult: she had not drawn something out of nothing (a meaningless act), but given to nothing, in its form of nothing, the form of something.”

“I have always been resistant to doctrine, and any spirituality I had experienced thus far in my life had been much more abstract and not aligned with any recognized religion. For me, the most trustworthy vehicle for spirituality had always proven to be music. It cannot be manipulated, or politicized, and when it is, that becomes immediately obvious.”

“You understand nothing," I told him with a weary shake of the head, but I would not try to make him understand. That there was no justification for it: the murder of another, no matter how vile. We had all been wrong and, blackest of ironies, I had known this to hold that precious and wondrous thing, life, in my hands. To hold it in my hands before I destroyed it.”