“Do you love me?What?Do you?I love you. I don't know if I trust you.Maybe you shouldn't do either.Maybe I'm the one who should decide!”

“What about me? I love you so much. And I tried to make you go away. I killed you and it didn't help. And I hate it! I hate that it's so hard and that you can hurt me so much. I know everything that you did, because you did it to me. Oh, God! I wish that I wished you dead. I don't. I can't. Strong is fighting! It's hard, and it's painful, and it's every day. It's what we have to do. And we can do it together. But if you're too much of a coward for that, then burn. If I can't convince you that you belong in this world, then I don't know what can. But do not expect me to watch. And don't expect me to mourn for you, because...”

“Ain't all buttons and charts, little albatross. Know what the first rule of flying is? Well I s'pose you do, since you already know what I'm 'bout to say.I do. But I like to hear you say it.Love. Can know all the math in the 'verse but take a boat in the air that you don't love? She'll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home.”

“I'm working! What are you doing? Besides being...Being what?Wait a minute...Sarcastic? Unfeeling? British?It's an animal.Where?No, the word!Still you have to admit, I am... very British. I don't say hard R's.You know what I like? Brown sauce. What's it made of? Science doesn't know!It's made of brown.Brown. Mined from the earth by the hardscrabble brown miners of North Brownderton.Oh, my God. I find lentils completely incomprehensible. What the sun-dappled hell is Echo doing at Fremont?That's got nothing to do with the drug, which means our problems are huge and indomitable.Ooh. I could eat that word. Or a crisp. Do you have any crisps?You haven't seen my drawer of inappropriate starches? C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon!Oh my god, I'm having such a terrible day.”

“When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?' Obviously there are differences between men and women - that's what makes it all fun. But we're all people. There's a lot of good writers who are very humanist, but still manage to kind of skip fifty-five per cent of the race. And I just don't get that. Not to be able to write an entire gender? To me, the question isn't how do you do it? It's how can you possibly avoid doing it?”

“I do remember what I said. The promise. To protect her. If I'd done that ... even if I didn't make it, you wouldn't've had to jump. I want you to know I did save you. Not when it counted, of course. But after that. Every night after that. I'd see it all again, do something different. Faster or more clever, you know? Dozens of times, lots of different ways ...Every night I save you.”

“It is good to know, no matter how long I am gone...you do not grow up too much.”