“I was alive. But I was alive without a memory, without a name; I was cut off from hope as well as from remorse or regret. I had no past and would probably have no future; I was buried alive in a void which was the wound that had been dealt me. I was like the wound itself.”

“Well, I remember this girl. I am not whole without her. I am not alive without her. When she was with me I was more alive than I have ever been, and not only when she was pleasant either. Even when we were fighting I was whole.”

“I have become a collapsing star, pulling everything around it, even the light, into an ever-expanding void. Once I lose all ability to communicate with the world outside myself, nothing will be left but what I remember. My memories will be like a sandbar, cut off from the shore by the incoming tide. In time they will become submerged, inaccessible to me. The prospect terrified me. For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.”

“Why is it acceptable to do such horrible things in the name of staying alive? Would it not have been better had I died with my innocence intact?”

“I must be without remorse or regrets as I am without excuse; for from the instant of my upsurge into being, I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.”

“Everything is so alive, that I can be alive. Without moving I can see it all. In your life I see everything that lives.”