“I want to die in my own way. It's my illness, my death, my choice. This is what saying yes means.”

“I was surprised by the growl that wanted to well up in my throat.... I told myself it was stress, not my illness's way of saying, Get your own take-out.”

“All I want to be is very young always and very irresponsible and to feel that my life is my own-to live and be happy and die in my own way to please myself”

“In many ways I was an independent woman. For years I'd made my own choices, paid my own bills, shoveled my own snow.”

“This is my right; it is the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs, but the violent jolt of the Capital, that is my choice. The meanest patient, yes, even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity. I wish, for your sake, Leonard, I could be happy in this quietness. [pause]But if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death..”

“I will dream if I want to, I said, and my death is my own affair.”