“It sickens me to think of youa prevalence of voidunholyimmovabledamned. gifts.an overblown sense of his own importance.I wish you were dead.forget about you.crowflorid withfantasiesit's so awfula perfect imitationa liability to loveforget youIngrid Magnussenquite alonemasturbatingrotdisappointmentgrotesqueYour arms cradlepoisonsgarbagegrenadesLonelinesslong-distance criesforeverneverresponse.take everythingfeel me?the human conditionStopplotting murderpenitenceCultivate ityouforbidappealrageimportantIcringefuckyouinsanepersondissonant and querulousmygas tanks marked FULL”

“It's such a liability to love another person.”

“But that was the thing about zero. Its weakness. Even if zero had taken over the entire universe, the biggest fascist of all, one tiny gesture could deny it. One footprint, one atom. You didn't have to be a genius. You didn't even have to know that was what you were doing. You made a mark. You changed something. It said, "A human being passed here." And changed zero to one. ”

“The cake had a trick candle that wouldn't go out, so I didn't get my wish. Which was just that it would always be like this, that my life could be a party just for me.”

“You ask me about regret? Let me tell you a few things about regret, my darling. There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning of the chain that brought us from there to here. Should you regret the whole chain, and the air in between, or each link separately, as if you could uncouple them? Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself? I've given more thought to this question than you could begin to imagine.”

“The pearls weren't really white, they were a warm oyster beige, with little knots in between so if they broke, you only lost one. I wished my life could be like that, knotted up so that even if something broke, the whole thing wouldn't come apart.”

“In a train...smash. In his arm her last...breath.' He had loved her. But he hated himself more. Such suffering, so much pain. And he thought it made him hateful. As if suffering was shameful, disgusting, as if pain were a crime. Who can judge another man's suffering?”