If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you

Whenever she felt like crying, she would instead become angry—at someone else or at herself—which meant that it was rare for her to shed tears.

When microorganisms die, they make oil; when huge timbers fall, they make coal. But everything here was pure, unadulterated rubbish that didn't make anything. Where does a busted videodeck get you?

They put up with such strenuous training, and where did their thoughts, their hopes and dreams, disappear to? When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish?

What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing?

If you listen to the radio for a whole hour there's maybe one decent song. The rest is mass-produced garbage

It feels like everything's been decided in advance that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense of who I am. It's like my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch.