“what if you could have all the wisdom of a lifetime and still look like you looked when you were twenty-five''or what?' I say.'what, what' she says.I say, 'I thought we were playing Would You Rather...?'She twists her head like a dog at a foghorn. 'Marla,' I say, 'you get the wisdom because you don't anymore look like you did when you were twenty-five.'She says, 'You don't understand the rules to this game.”

“I can pick up the city feeds on my antenna. It said they were going to change you all. Turn you into something less dangerous. Are you still...?"She gazed at him. "What do you think, David?"He peered into her eyes for a long moment, then sighed and shook his head. "You just look like Tally to me."She looked down, her vision blurring.What's the matter?"Nothing, David." She shook her head. "You just took on five million years of evolution again."I what? Did I say something wrong?"No." She smiled. "You said something right.”

“You are making it harder than it has to be," she says.I say, "And should I forgive him because it would be easier?""You don't nee a reason to forgive," she says. "If you want to go on with someone, that is what you do.”

“Okay. Would you rather I looked like Hugh Jackman or George Clooney?” “Johnny Depp,” she says. She answers a little too fast for my comfort. “What the hell, Lake? You’re supposed to say Will! You’re supposed to say you want me to look like me!” “But you weren't one of the options,” she says. “Neither was Johnny Depp!”

“We talk for a very long time and I ask her if it gets easier and she says not really, just different. A different duller kind of hurt, the kind that doesn't surprise you anymore. I ask what her parent were like when it happened and she says they have never been the same.”

“How do you know me?" she says.He looks at her through his narrow eyes. "I was," he says."You were what?" she asks."I was," he says again. "And now I'm not.”