“If I had a baseball bat and bulldozer, maybe I could stop him. But without real weapons, without a pistol, a man-eating lion, and a vial of bubonic plague, I had zero change of competing against him.”

“I really wasn't sure if I wanted this guy knowing where I lived. After all, he was wielding a baseball bat, and I had just seen him strike several people with that bat.”

“It was strange, really. A couple months ago, I had thought I couldn’t live without him. Apparently I could.”

“How had it turned into this? I had lived my whole stupid life without him, and now I could barely make it through the hour.”

“I hadn't lived a real life―I'd had just a model of a life. Everything I did, everything I thought, was suspended safely by strings, too high up for anyone to damage. Zero contact, zero risk. Now those strings had been cut and I was going to die, never having had a chance to live without them.”

“I wanted to tell him I loved him, that I'd always loved him, & that life-& I- had never been the same without him there.”