“But we knew we had no choice, we had to make it across the clearing because, as young boys, the risk of staying in town was greater for us than trying to escape. Young boys were immediately recruited, and the initials RUF were carved wherever it pleased the rebels, with a hot bayonet.”
″‘(A guardian ad litem is) a person trained to work with kids in the family court, who determines what’s in the child’s best interests,’ Anna recites. ‘Or in other words, just another grown-up deciding what happens to me.‘”
“Dream big, they say. Shoot for the stars. Then they lock us away for 12 years and tell us where to sit, when to pee, and what to think. […] Then we turn 18 and even though we’ve never had an original thought, we have to make the most important decision of our lives. […] And if you don’t have the money and don’t really have the grades, a lot of the decision gets made for you.”
“They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good. And I see that clearly--that business about the marginal conditionings. Music and the sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure but of pain.”
and besides, while Count Dracula was speaking, there was that in his eyes and in his bearing which made me remember that I was a prisoner, and that if I wished it I could have no choice.”