“I have a list in my head of all the feelings I still want to feel before I die. And you have ticked so many things off that list.”

“Yet you still value the things you’ve lost the most. Because the things you’ve lost are still perfect in your head. They never rusted. They never broke. They are made of the memories you once had, which only grow rosier and brighter, day by day. They are made of the dreams of how wonderful things could have been and must never suffer the indignity of actually still existing. Of being real. Of having flaws. Of breaking and deteriorating. Only the things you no longer have will always be perfect.”

“And when I asked you how you’d been, I meant I missed you more than I’ve ever missed anything before.”

“Sometimes I touch the things you used to touch, looking for echoes of your fingers.”

“I keep thinking you already know. I keep thinking I’ve sent you letters that were only ever written in my mind.”

“If nothing else, one day you can look someone straight in the eyes and say “But I lived through it. And it made me who I am today.”

“Often I've thought of myself as a state; a country or, at the very least, a city. It used to seem to me that the different ways I felt sometimes about ideas, courses of action and so on were like the differing political moods that countries go through. It has always seemed to me that people vote in a new government not because they actually agree with their politics but just because they want a change. Somehow they think that things will be better under the new lot. Well, people are stupid, but it all seems to have more to do with mood, caprice and atmosphere than carefully thought-out arguments. I can feel the same sort of thing going on in my head. Sometimes the thoughts and feelings I had didn't really agree with each other, so I decided I must be lots of different people inside my brain.”