“I’d much rather pretend I’m somewhere else, and any time I open the pages of a book, that happens.”

“No thanks; I'd much rather pretend I'm somewhere else, and any time I open the pages of a book, that happens.”

“I’m here not because I am supposed to be here, or because I’m trapped here, but because I’d rather be with you than anywhere else in the world.”

“Sometimes I close my eyes and paint these walls a different color. I imagine I’m wearing warm socks and sitting by a fire. I imagine someone’s given me a book to read, a story to take me away form the torture of my own mind. I want to be someone else somewhere else with something else to fill my mind. I want to run, to feel the wind tug at my hair. I want to pretend that this is just a story within a story. That this cell is just a scene, that these hands don’t belong to me, that this window leads to somewhere beautiful if only I could break it. I pretend this pillow is clean, I pretend this bed is soft. I pretend and pretend and pretend until the world becomes so breathtaking behind my eyelids that I can no longer contain it. But then my eyes fly open and I’m caught around the throat by a pair of hands that won’t stop suffocating suffocating suffocating. My thoughts, I think, will soon be sound. My mind, I hope, will soon be found.”

“When I meet a European, the first thing I say is, “I’d much rather watch football than football.” But I’m just teasing them, and they know I’d really rather watch football than football.”

“Rather than turning the page, it's much easier to just throw the book away.”