“What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.”

“Come away with me, he said, we will live on a desert island. I said, I am a desert island. It was not what he had in mind.”

“There I am, in the Grade Six class picture, smiling broadly. Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hardshelled, firmly closed.”

“Not a hope. I know where I am, and who, and what day it is. These are the tests, and I am sane. Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.”

“Messy love is better than none, I guess. I am no authority on sane living.”

“I am not a saint or a cripple,I am not a wound; now I will seewhether I am a coward.”

“Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hard-shelled, firmly closed.”