“Here's the thing. I hate kids. Always have.I mean, I know the job of the race, biologically speaking, is to achieve immortality through reproduction, but the idea of getting impregnated and blowing up like a balloon as I serve as a carrier and service unit for this other person who will eventually burst out of me in the most terrifying way imaginable, then carry on using me one way or another for the rest of my life, is right up there with throwing myself off the top of a twenty-story building. If I have a biological clock, it is digital and does not tick.”

“I think…Have I given up anything by living with another person? Has there been a trade-off?Always, there is a trade-off. And the answer comes to me instantly. I have given up a certain degree of freedom. The ability to plow through my life with utter disregard for the thoughts and feelings of other people. I can no longer read a magazine and throw it on the floor.In exchange, I get unlimited access to the one person I have met in my life whom I automatically felt was out of my league. My favorite human being, the single person I cherish above all others. This is the person I get to share the oxygen in the room with .And for this, I will happily scrub the toilet.”

“I resigned myself to the fact that the only way I would get Mishrani out of the movement was to deprogram her. It was a terrifying prospect. There were very real risks that it could go wrong and I could wind up in jail, or worse, Mishrani could end up hating me for the rest of her life.There was no way around it, though. It was a thing that needed doing, and I was just the guy to do it.”

“I have to keep reminding myself -- this is not me. It is chemistry. It is biology. It is not who I am.”

“And that day, I probably walked right by them out of class, not really knowing either of them or having any idea who they'd end up being to me, but I can imagine it so accurately because I was then (and I guess I am still) in my own world of misreading people, reaching out to them in an awkward, overplanned way that blows up big-time, then retreating back in to my just-me existence, while they go around telling anyone who will listen what a tard I am.”

“I think the biggest innovations of the twenty-first century will be the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning, just like the digital one was when I was his age.”