“They always said on TV you could do anything you wanted, but here I was trying to do something and it wasn't working. I would never be able to do it.”

“You do not have to utter anything you do not want to utter,” I told her, and she said, “Then I would never utter another word again.” “You do not have to do anything that you do not want to do.” “Then I would never do anything again.”

“Conrad and I were linked, we would always be linked. That wasn't something I could do away with. I knew that now- that love wasn't something you could erase, no matter how hard you tired.”

“I never could stand being forced to do something I didn't want to do at a time I didn't want to do it. Whenever I was able to do something I liked to do, though, when I wanted to do it, and the way I wanted to do it, I'd give it everything I had.”

“But if I could do anything?Maybe you would want to be able to save the world, the Voice said. Did you ever think of that?No. I frowned. Leave that to the grown-ups.But grown-ups are the ones destroying the world, the Voice said. Think about it.”

“Do you write every day?' 'Oh, no. Oh, I sort of try. I don't work very hard, really. Really I'm on vacation. All the time. Or you could say I work all the time, too. It comes to the same thing.' He'd said all this before, to others; he wondered if he'd said it to her. 'It's like weekend homework. Remember? There wasn't ever a time you absolutely had to do it - there was always Saturday, then Sunday - but then there wasn't ever a time when it wasn't there to do, too.' 'How awful.' ("Novelty")”