“I would never be part of anything. I would never really belong anywhere, and I knew it, and all my life would be the same, trying to belong, and failing. Always something would go wrong. I am a stranger and I always will be, and after all I didn’t really care.”

“It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must be a little in love with death!”

“If I'd thought I would regret it," he said calmly, "I never would have made that oath. I knew what becoming a knight would mean. And if you asked me again, the answer would still be the same." He sighed, framing my face with his hands. "My life... everything I am... belongs to you.”

“I grieved, but a part of me felt a lightening of a burden that I had carried all my life: that I could never be worthy of them, that I would always disappoint or fail them. As an unknown slave in the fields of the baron, I knew the worst was over. I had failed them. At least I could not do so again”

“There are videos where I would go approaching strangers and sing the songs from 'The Lion King. I would have been about four years, and I came running up to people on the beach, strangers that I chose at random and began to sing, and my family never knew where I was, they were always looking for me, trying to imagine who I was harassing this time .”

“And then I had a thought, clear as day. I would never be somebody's favorite again. I would never be a kid again, not in the same way. That was all over now. She was really gone.”