“If the directions say to do it, we do it," said Maggie. "That's what everyone says. If you don't listen to the Monkey, he doesn't meet with you.""Let's hope the directions don't tell us to shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die," I muttered, and pulled out onto the street.”

“You're a mad scientist,' said Maggie, in what may well have been intended as a reassuring tone. 'We don't expect you to be nice. We just go to bed every night hoping you won't mutate us before we wake up.'Dr. Abbey blinked at her. 'That's...almost sweet. In a disturbing sort of a way.”

“He'll die first, we both know it, but I don't know... I really don't know how long I'll stay alive without him. That's the part Shaun doesn't know. I don't intend to be an only child for long.”

“Why can't you just say 'don't breathe the water' like a normal person?""Because I'm a doctor, and they teach us never to use little words where big ones will do.”

“Me, I say those are all great things to live for, if they're what happens to float your boat, but at the end of the day, there's got to be somebody you're doing it for. Just one person you're thinking of everytime you make a decision, everytime you tell the truth, or tell a lie, or anything.I've got mine. Do you?”

“This is what I do know: A lie, however well-intended, can't prepare you for reality or change the world... To tell the truth is to provide armament against a world too full of cruelties to be defeated with simple falsehoods... It seems to me we owe the world--more, we owe ourselves--the exchange of comfort for the chance that maybe the truth can do what people always say it can. The truth may, given the opportunity, set us free.”

“She really talks to you, doesn't she?" She asked. "it's not just you talking to her. She talks BACK.""hel, half the time she starts it." I said, half-defensively. "I know it's weird.""Well, yes, it's weird. Technically, I think it's insane. But who am I to judge?" Maggie shrugged. "I live in a house most people view as the setting of a horror movie waiting to happen, with an army of security ninjas and a couple dozen epileptic dogs for company. I don't think I'm qualified to pass judgement on 'weird'.”