I found it impossible to imagine my own adolescent body succumbing to old age, deteriorating.
-- Narrator (I)

Importance: When the narrator reunites with Juan, he finds himself recalling the time when he and Juan met in the mental hospital. Because Juan was older than the narrator, he initially tried avoiding him. He feared being around elderly people, as they reminded him of his own mortality. In the present, however, the narrator is finding that spending time with Juan is no longer repulsive, but illuminating and transforming. Juan indeed offers the narrator a necessary gateway into the past.

Your mind, then.
-- Juan (I)

Importance: Throughout the narrator's time with Juan at the Palace, Juan challenges the narrator to confront fraught facets of himself. In this moment from the start of their time together in Juan's Palace room, Juan is asking the narrator why he came to the Palace. Although the narrator has yet to confront this truth...