“I am Ivan. I am a gorilla. It’s not as easy as it looks.”

“The way I see it, I stopped being a kid on April 12, 1951. ”

“It is always there. Like the ground underneath my feet.”

“Everyone my age remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the contest.”

“A genius shoots at something no one else can see, and hits it.”

“I’m typing about the stabbing for a good reason. I can’t talk.”

“CRACK! BANG! Josef Landau shot straight up in bed, his heart racing. That sound—it was like someone had kicked the front door in. Or had he dreamed it?”

“Words.

I’m surrounded by thousands of words. Maybe millions.”

“Pax and Peter have been inseparable ever since Peter rescued him as a kit.”

“There was no warning the night the wall went up.”

“It’s not every day you wake up with a mission on your mind, but I had a mission and I was determined to accomplish it.”

“The mountain was calling me. I had to run away. I had to.”

“I begin in darkness, and my nose tells me everything I know.”

“When I was little, a kid pointed at me on the playground and shouted, ‘Her arms fell off!’ then ran away screaming in terror to his mom, who had to cuddle him on her lap and rub his head for like ten minutes to get him to calm down.”

“This is how I feel every single day of my life, like I’m falling without a parachute.”