“You got the makings of greatness in you, but you gotta take the helm and chart your own course! Stick to it, no matter the squalls! And when the time comes, you'll get the chance to really test the cut of your sails and show what you're made of! And... well, I hope I'm there, catching some of the light coming off you that day.”

“Letter to Myself, in Remission, from Myself, Terminal"You'll come to hate your own poems,read them as pretty wisps of colorful thinking,all those images just a splash of colored oilsloshed over a pool gone rancid. Admit it.Atheists always scared you. And no wonder.Those nights you switched on the fan so no one could hear you scream into your pillow, weepingand biting your own hands like a motherless monkey,banded to a body that despised you,a suit of coals with a jammed-shut zipper.Instead of the truth, you took refuge in stories and souls, wore the word survivor like a pink nimbus.All the while, my dear, I waited, knowingyou'd catch up to me one day. I'm holding the black-backed mirror to your face. Look into it.”

“Because I feel as if I let it down. As if it needed something from me, I was its only hope, and now that hope is gone.''What penis doesn’t try to make you feel that way?”

“At the beginning of the day, when you're doing a show like this, you want to entertain and you want people to have a really fun time...but at the end of the day you want them to walk out feeling changed and taking something more away from it...and it's really kind of rare that you get to do that all in the same night.”

“It's no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You've got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they've got to come. You can't force them.”

“God, it’s over. Takumi, you gotta stop stealing other people’s problems and get some of your own.”

“Uphill? There's nothing up the hill," Colly said, trying desperately to work out where this conversation was going."As a matter of fact, there is. There's a bluff about twelve meters high, with a river running below it. The water's deep, so it'll be quite safe for you to jump." In his brief glimpse of the river, Halt had noticed that the fast-flowing water cut under the bluff in a sharp curve. That should mean that the bottom had been scoured out over the years. A thought struck him. "You can swim, I assume?""Yes. I can swim," Colly said. "But I'm going jumping off some bluff just because you say to!""No, no. Of course not. That'd be asking far too much of you. You'll jump off because if you don't, I'll shoot you. It'll be the same effect, really. If I have to shoot you, you'll fall off. But I thought I'd give you a chance to survive." Halt paused, then added, "Oh, and if you decide to run downhill, I'll also shoot you with an arrow. Uphill and off is really your only chance of survival.""You can't be serious!" Colly said. "Do you really-"But he got no further. Halt leaned forward, putting a hand up to stop the outburst."Colly, take a good, long look into my eyes and tell me if you see anything, anything at all, that says I'm not deadly serious."His eyes were deep brown, almost black. They were steady and unwavering and there was no sign of anything there but utter determination. Colly looked at them and after a few second, his eyes dropped away. halt nodded as the other man's gaze slid away from his."Good. Now we've got that settled, you should try to get some sleep. You have a big day ahead of you tomorrow.”