“I wouldn’t kill your pony. I’d like to believe it, anyway. I’d like to believe I wouldn’t drag you out in to the woods and leave you there, either. So far, it hasn’t come up.”

“I wondered what I’d end up looking like once I bloomed. I couldn’t even guess. If I had to be stuck in my own skinny, gawky, coltish body forever… well. It probably wouldn’t be so bad.I wouldn’t mind a little more in the chest, though. But wild horses wouldn’t drag that out of me. Ever.”

“Regrets came up and asked me if I’d like to own them. Declined them for the most part but took a few just so I wouldn’t leave this relationship empty handed.”

“I’m just thinking that would be pleasant. To be reading, say, out of a book, and you to come up and touch me – my neck, say, or my knee – and I’d carry on reading, I might let a smile, no more, wouldn’t lose my place on the page. It would be pleasant to come to that. We’d come so close, do you see, that I wouldn’t be surprised out of myself every time you touched.”

“I’d make a great politician. I’d make it out of pig shit, so it wouldn’t be as foul as it is now.”

“If I were king, I wouldn’t pay you the money I owe you. I’d give you a far more valuable gift: the gift of life—your own. Yes, you’d get to keep it!”