“deep down I believe my year was a special year: it produced me.”

“I want my brain to slide back into the slot it was meant to be in, rest there the way it did before the fall of last year, back when I was young, witty, and my teachers said I had incredible promise.”

“That's my school. I worked harder to get in than I did for anything else, ever. I went there because, coming out of it, I'd be able to be President. Or a lawyer. Rich, that's the point. Rich and successful. And look where it got me. One stupid year and here I am with not one, but two bracelets on my wrist, next to a shrink in a room adjacent to a hall where there's a guy named Human Being walking around. If I keep doing this for three more years, where will I be? I'll be a complete loser. And what If I keep on? What if I do okay, live with the depression, get into College, do College, go to Grad School, get the Job, get the Money, get Kids and a Wife and a Nice Car? What kind of crap will I be in then? I'll be completely crazy.”

“I wish I was Dumbo the Octopus. Adapted to freezing deep-ocean temperatures, I’d flop around down there atpeace. The big concerns of my life would be what sort of bottom-coating slime to feed off of—that’s not so different from now—plus I wouldn’t haveany natural predators; then again, I don’t have any now, and that hasn’t done me a whole lot of good. But it suddenly makes sense: I’d like to beunder the sea, as an octopus.”

“I'm waiting for her to say "Craig, what you need to do is X" and for the Shift to occur. I want there to be a Shift so bad. I want to feel my brain slide back into the slot it was meant to be in, rest there the way it did before the fall of last year, back when I was young, and witty, and my teachers said I had incredible promise, and I had incredible promise, and I spoke up in class because I was excited and smart about the world. I want the Shift so bad. I'm waiting for the phrase that will invoke it. It'll be like a miracle within my life. But is Dr. Minerva a miracle worker? No. She's a thin, tan lady from Greece with red lipstick.”

“We came up to the first tower of the bridge, with a plaque proclaiming who had built it; I stopped to read. John Roebling. Aided by his wife, and then his son. He died during construction. But hey, the Brooklyn Bridge might be here for eight hundred years. I wanted to leave something like that behind. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I felt like I had taken the first steps”

“Just thoughts of what I have to do. Homework. And it comes up to my brain and I look at it and think "I'm not going to be able to do that" and then it cycles back down and the next one comes up. And then things come up like "You should be doing more extracurricular activities" because I should, I don't do near enough, and that gets pushed down and it's replaced with the big one: "What college are you going into, Craig?" which is like the doomsday question.”