“I am not a nurse escorting six lunatics to the ice cream parlor.”

“Confuse was the nurses' word for abuse.”

“Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can't go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside. Then, depending on how the rest of the family is feeling that person is kept inside or snatched out, to prove something about the family's mental health.”

“How the fuck else am I going to get any attention in this place?"Lisa always called the hospital 'this place.”

“When I was supposed to be awake, I was asleep. When I was supposed to sleep, I was silent. When a pleasure offered itself to me, I avoided it.”

“And in the end, I lost him. I did it on purpose, the way Garance lostBaptiste in the crowd. I needed to be alone, I felt. I wanted to be going on alone to my future.”

“I was trying to explain my situation to myself. My situation was that I was in pain and nobody knew it, even I had trouble knowing it. So I told myself, over and over, You are in pain. It was the only way I could get through to myself. I was demonstrating externally and irrefutably an inward condition.”