“I knew people were talking, but I wasn't listening. I wasn't interested in anything anyone had to say.”

“I closed my eyes. I used to think I was protecting the world, too. But it wasn't that simple. Nothing was. Who were we to decide that anyone or anything didn't deserve the spark of life they had been given?”

“I said I wasn't interested, and she was bright enough to say that she wasn't really interested either. As things turned out, we both overestimated our apathies, but not that much.”

“As I said, I wish I could say it was easy. It wasn't, but it wasn't hard either. But without a strong reason or purpose, anything in life is hard. ”

“Cancer. The word meant the same to me as tsunami or piranha. I had never seen them; I wasn't even quite sure what they were, but I knew they were bad and I knew in many cases they were deadly.”

“I wasn't fooled. He was avoiding looking at me. "There's nothing to talk about.""I knew you'd say that. Actually, it was a toss-up between that and 'I don't know what you're talking about.'"Dimitri sighed.”