In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.

Isn't it possible, he wondered, for one person to love another without trying to own each other? Or is that buried so deep in our genes that we can never get it out? Territoriality. My wife. My friend. My lover. My outrageous and annoying computer personality who's about to be shut off at the behest of a half-crazy girl with OCD on a planet that I never heard of and how will I live without [her] when she's gone?

Maybe she couldn't know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.

Make friends. Be a leader. Kiss butts if you have to, but if the other guys despise you-you know what I mean?

I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.

But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: to see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost.