“Knowing one was comprised of recycled matter only and that selfhood was a delusion did not take away the aching of the heart.”

“If not just the brain but the quirks that made the individual were composed of recycled matter only, it was hard to be sure where the edges of one such being ended and another person began.”

“The physical shock took away the pain of being.”

“She was so beautiful I had to move away.”

“Shakespeare drew a map of the human mind as clearly as Newton mapped the heavens. Wht is one considered science and the other fir only to be mocked with jokes about pretty girls and drury lane?”

“You can't recall someone whose name has worn away.”

“There was a pretty young woman I used to see pegging out sheets and I worried that she would grow old there and that no one would know how beautiful she was. And maybe she would die without ever having really lived.”