“These albums were thick with babies, but my replicas thinned out as I grew older, as if the population of my duplicates had been hit with some plague.”

“I woke up one morning, and all of my stuff had been stolen and replaced by exact duplicates".”

“It is written in my life-blood, such that it is, thick or thin; and I can no other.”

“It was a full Spears album, apparently, and each song was as ridiculous as the one before. They were catchy, yes, but so was the plague.”

“From the photo albums, every single print of her had been peeled away. Shots of the both of us together had been cut, the parts with her neatly trimmed away, leaving my image behind. Photos of me alone or of mountains and rivers and deer and cats were left intact. Three albums rendered into a revised past. It was as if I'd been alone at birth, alone all my days, and would continue alone.”

“I was crushing on my mentor. Crushing on my older mentor. I had to be out of my mind. He was seven years older than me. Old enough to be my…well, okay, nothing. But still older than me. Seven years was a lot. He's been learning to write when I was born. When I'd been learning to write and throw books at my teachers, he's probably been kissing girls. Probably lots of girls, considering how he looked.”