“Call me jaded, but I didn't see then and I don't see now how hugging, and counting and focusing on a flickering candle or, God help me, a favorite stuffed animal, can possibly make you forget the nine pounds of wriggling human forcing its way out of you the same way it got into you nine months-and nine pounds-ago.As the scientific theory goes, what goes in must come out. Eventually. Somehow. And the coming-out part is never as much fun as the going in part. ”

“I wake up in the morning and I see that flower, with the dew on its petals, and at the way it's folding out, and it makes me happy, she said. It's important to focus on the things in the here and now, I think. In a month, the flower will be shriveled and you will miss its beauty if you don't make the effort to do it now. Your life, eventually, is the same way.”

“Well see what you wanna see. You should see it all. Well take what you want from me. You deserve it all. Nine times out of ten our hearts just get dissolved. Well I want a better place or just a better way to fall.”

“A while ago?” Anaxantis asked. “Yes, he raped me a while ago. Exactly nine months and two days ago. What's that? Nine months or nine minutes. It's the same. And it is in the past, you say? Then why is it still happening, every day, every time I close my eyes? Every time I hear someone behind me, and I don't know who it is? How is it that I get an almost irresistible urge to kill anyone who happens to touch me unexpectedly? Tell me, Hemarchidas, how do I forgive, let alone forget, something that is still happening, that keeps happening over and over? How? How do I do that?”

“I'll think about you everyday. Part of me is scared that there'll come a time when you don't feel the same way, that you'll somehow forget about what we shared, so this is what I want to do forever.”

“Nine, now eight. Are the rest of you out there?”