“I have not reneged on a promise. I have changed my mind.”

“Often people ask, "How can you say you're blessed to have a son with Down syndrome?" My outlook on life has forever changed. I see my own challenges differently. He's always showing me that life is so much bigger than self.”

“Your Excellency, I have no need of this hypothesis.”

“There isn’t a name for my situation. Firstly because I decided to kill myself. And then because of this idea:I don’t have to do it immediately.Whoosh, through a little door. It’s a limbo.I need never answer the phone again or pay a bill. My credit score no longer matters. Fears and compulsions don’t matter. Socks don’t matter. Because I’ll be dead. And who am I to die? A microwave chef. A writer of pamphlets. A product of our time. A failed student. A faulty man. A bad poet. An activist in two minds. A drinker of chocolate milk, and when there’s no chocolate, of strawberry and sometimes banana.”

“Looking around, I wonder what is it that makes my fellows able to bear such a life. How can they face the day, when I can't? Is there some secret to living that makes its conditions irrelevant? A neutering of expectation, a mastery of the mundane? Or have they just grown accustomed to rape?”

“(in which, along with Montaigne, we raise the question of whether a book you have read and completely forgotten, and which you have even forgotten you have read, is still a book you have read)”

“The world changes materially. Science makes advances in technology and understanding. But the world of humanity doesn't change.”