"Her voice cracks and I fight the tug of memories trying to pull me back to that place where people thought he was the center of the universe. I feel a flash of hatred toward her for being so broken by the loss of him, for needing him so much when he was just a man who scooped up the human detritus from the edges of society and fooled them into thinking they were part of something special."

“Don’t believe anything on the news feeds. It’s all just a circus for the masses.”

“Maybe one day I’ll be able to live somewhere with a garden. I’ll be old but skilled enough to still have some consultancy work to pay for the space to grow real food. Hands in the dirt again. Doing something real. No people around. Yeah, that’s the dream. Strange how the things we rail against and hate in our youth can be the things we crave as we get older.”

“She speaks with the authority of the ignorant.”

“I made a mistake when I was young and didn’t know how the world worked and I have paid for it. Many, many times over.”

“I’m still not even sure I believe that now. Sounds like the sort of bullshit my psych supervisor would say.”

“He’s trying to get me to confess some fictional problem to him and I won’t fall for it.”