I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born - Margaret Atwood

It’s a lifelong failing: she has never been prepared. But how can you have a sense of wonder if you’re prepared for everything? Prepared for the sunset. Prepared for the moonrise. Prepared for the ice storm. What a flat existence that would be.

That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.

How much misery…how much needless despair has been caused by a series of biological mismatches, a misalignment of the hormones and pheromones? Resulting in the fact that the one you love so passionately won’t or can’t love you. As a species we’re pathetic in that way: imperfectly monogamous. If only we could pair-bond for life, like gibbons, or else opt for total-guilt free promiscuity, there’d be no more sexual torment. You’d never want someone you couldn’t have’
‘…But think what we’d be giving up…we’d be human robots…there’d be no free choice.’
‘…we’re human robots anyway, only we’re faulty ones.