“But this was how I'd always been... finite in my capacity for tolerating simple day-to-day contact. I could handle it just fine, all the way up to the point that I couldn't anymore, as if I existed on a tether, and not a particularly long one, finding myself able to wonder only so far into the territory of another human being before snapping back into myself. ”

“I had to smile to myself. In only a day or two, life seemed different from the way I'd always conceived of it. Complicated and very simple at the same time.”

“I'd fallen. Fallen hard. But not so far that I couldn't pick myself up.”

“My weirdness aside, if I am to find any friends, particularly a girlfriend, she will almost certainly have to be a human. My previous track record tends to suggest that of all species that exist on the planet, it has so far been exclusively humans to whom I find myself sexually attracted. This is a good thing legally if nothing else.”

“In the days after my heart attack & before I began to write again, all I could think about was dying. I'd been spared again, and only after the danger had passed did I allow my thoughts to unravel to their inevitable end. I imagined all the ways I could go. Blood clot to the brain. Infarction. Thrombosis. Pneumonia. Grand mal obstruction to the vena cava. I saw myself foaming at the mouth, writhing on the floor. I'd wake up in the night, gripping my throat. And yet. No matter how often I imagined the possible failure of my organs, I found the consequence inconceivable. That it could happen to me. I forced myself to picture the last moments. The penultimate breath. A final sigh. And yet. It was always followed by another.”

“I wondered just how much of her I'd invented. Had I only mastered some skill for awing myself? Or would this creature, Camilla, like a settler's incessant New World, keep increasing my capacity not only to marvel but to marvel at myself in the face of her?”