“Ah men,why do you want all this attention?I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutelynecessary. What do you have to offer meI can't find otherwiseexcept humiliation? Which I no longerneed.”

“What is it the I'll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which isn't yours to bestow. Only a listener, perhaps; only someone who will see me. Don't prettify me though, whatever else you do: I have no wish to be a decorated skull. But I leave myself in your hands. What choice do I have? By the time you read this last page, that- if anywhere- is the only place I will be.”

“All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.”

“She must have heard the door opening and closing in the middle of the night; she produces a smile, warm, conspiratorial, and I know what circuits are closing in her head: by screwing Joe she's brought us back together. Saving the world, everyone wants to; men think they can do it with guns, women with their bodies, love conquers all, conquerors love all, mirages raised by words.”

“I´ll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew it meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first, in your head, and then you make it real. So that´s how they do it, I thought. I seemed never to have known that before.”

“bye-bye love, as in songs. All alone now. It was so sad. Why did such things have to disintegrate like that? Why did longing and desire, and friendliness and goodwill too, have to shatter into pieces? Why did they have to be so thoroughfully over?I could make myself cry even more by repeating the key word: love,alone, sad, over. I did it on purpose.”

“Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?”