“If Slater were someone else, Kevin would merely be the poor victim of a horrible plot. Unless he was killed by Slater, in which case he would be the dead victim of a horrible plot”

“But why should I cast myself in the ancient female part of victim of men's plots and passions?”

“The guy got torn the hell in half. He's in two big pieces, and he's very dead, unless I need him for the plot later.”

“You cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim once—there has to be a limit”

“But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.”

“He couldn't see her, sitting outside in the darkness, looking in at the light. A pair of actors trapped in a recondite play with no hint of plot or narrative. Stumbiling through their parts nursing someone else’s sorrow. Grieving someone else’s grief. Unable somehow to change plays. Or purchase, for a fee some cheap brand of exorcism from a conveyor with a fancy degree, who would sit them down and say in one of many ways: “ Your not the sinners. You’re the sinned against. You were only children.You had no control. You are the victims, not the perpetrators.” It would of helped if they could of made that crossing. If only they could have worn, even temporarily, the tragic hood of victim hood”