“My body knew what to do, what it wanted , even though my brain was firing off so many warnings I felt like Homeland Security during a Code Red.”

“And just like that, I knew what I wanted. Something I had always wanted. But it was so unrealistic it hadn’t even made it to my wish list.”

“Though the urge to hurry was beginning to beat through my brain, I knew that was the one thing I couldn't do. Not of I wanted to save lives.”

“I don't know what this great thing I'm meant to be doing is, and it looks to me as if I was supposed not to know. And I resent that, right? "The old me knew. The old me cared. Fine, so far so good. Except that the old me cared so much that he actually got inside his own brain--my own brain--and locked off the bits that knew and cared, because if I knew and cared I wouldn't be able to do it. [...] "But this former self of mine killed himself off, didn't he, by changing my brain? Okay, that was his choice. This new me has its own choices to make, and by a strange coincidence those choices involve not knowing and not caring about this big number, whatever it is. That's what he wanted, that's what he got. "Except this old self of mine tired to leave himself in control, leaving orders for me in the bit of my brain he locked off. Well, I don't want to know, and I don't want to hear them. That's my choice. I'm not going to be anybody's puppet, particularly not my own. [...] "The old me is dead! [...] Killed himself! The dead shouldn't hang about trying t0 interfere with the living.”

“The words fire from my mouth like bullets, ricocheting off the walls before I can even register what I'm saying.”

“My red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher. Below it the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body.”