“What kind of competition is there in your body? Suppose your brain said ' I'm the most important organ, and the liver said 'I am, and I want to go in a free enterprise-system.' You would rot away in a month, if every organ of your body, were out for itself.”

“… every time you lose, you die a little, inside. Not all your organs… maybe just your liver.”

“The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.”

“Of course, every organ in your body matters. Except your feet and your hands. You can still live without them. They are part of you, but not the real YOU.”

“I suppose it would be a lot easier if a training manual were issued at puberty. Chapter One: what your body is feeling isn't necessarily you.”

“This is motherhood for you,' said my own mother. 'Going through life with your heart outside your body.”

“And be desired, she said while holding me in her arms:
because happy are the desired, each and all, she said with eyes
closed, in a desperate embrace. And our bodies cuddled up
to each other. Happy are those who want to love, she said,
today happy are the desired ones. I want you, she said,
want your movements, because they all are good for me,
want your caresses, because they all are good for me.
Give you my untouched young body, because I’m yearning
now for your embrace. I give you my vulnerable young body,
because I am yearning --- even for pain. Desired you are,
and I desire your desire, and do with me whatever you want
to do, she said, for happy are the desired ones, each and all,
and what I want to be is: desired-for-ever.”

“I am what I want to be," he said. "You forgot that— and that was your mistake.”

“Out there in the spotlight you're a million miles away.
Every ounce of energy you try to give away.
As the sweat pours out your body like the music that you play.
Later in the evening, as you lie awake in bed.
With the echoes from the amplifiers ringin' in your head.
You smoke the day's last cigarette, rememberin' what she said.”

“I— finally, I have the body that I want, and that's a thing people really covet. It's a hard thing to achieve, and I did. And I'm going to tell you how to have exactly the body that you want. You just have to want a shitty body. That's all it is. You have to want your own shitty, ugly, disgusting body.”