“There could be no snake in Quntana Roo's garden.Only later did I see that I had been raising her as a doll.”

“There could be no snakes in Quintana Roo's garden.Only later did I see that I had been raising her as a doll.”

“Roo: What’s your definition of popularity?Hutch: I used to think people were popular because they were good-looking, or nice, or funny, or good at sports. Roo: Aren’t they?Hutch: I’d think, if I could just be those things, I’d – you know – have more friends than I do. But in seventh grade, when Jackson and those guys stopped hanging out with me, I tried as hard as I could to get them to like me again. But then . . . (shaking his head as if to clear it) I don’t really wanna talk about it. Roo: What happened? Hutch: They just did some ugly stuff to me is all. And really, it was for the best. Roo: Why?Hutch: Because I was cured. I realized the popular people weren’t nice or funny or great-looking. They just had power, and they actually got the power by teasing people or humiliating them – so people bonded to them out of fear. Roo: Oh. Hutch: I didn’t want to be a person who could act like that. I didn’t want to ever speak to any person who could act like that. Roo: OhHutch: So then I wasn’t trying to be popular anymore. Roo: Weren’t you lonely?Hutch: I didn’t say it was fun. (He bites his thumbnail, bonsai dirt and all.) I said it was for the best.”

“I wish I could tell you that I leapt to my feet anyway, snake be dammed. Or that I wrestled the snake and then fought my opponent. But I saw the icy cold disdain in the snake's eyes and did the only prudent thing I could - I froze in my place. After a long few moments, the grew bored and slithered away, as had my opponent. Yet I felt that I had won, for I lived to fight another day.”

“It seemed as if I could see things in her that others couldn't see, qualities which not even she was aware of. It was as I I could already see in her the woman she would later become.”

“During the First World War, I told her, Hitler had been a runner, delivering messages between the German trenches, and he was disgusted by seeing his fellow soldiers visit French brothels. To keep the Aryan bloodlines pure,and prevent the spread of venereal disease, he commissioned an inflatable doll that Nazi troops could take into battle. Hitler himself designed the dolls to have blond hair and large breasts. The Allied firebombing of Dresden destroyed the factory before the dolls could ever go into wide distribution.”