“Ky still looks at me and I wonder for a moment if he is going to ask me what I am thinking about. But of course, he doesn't. He doesn't learn things by asking questions... He learns by watching.”

“When he had shown me all he led me to his door. "Why do you collect such things?" I asked hime before I ventured out upon the Strand."When a child is born, he looks first only to his mother. As he grows he learns he has an entire household around him, filled with servants and sweets. Still later he ventures into the streets, and hears the ragman cry, or sees the cocks fight. He learns his letters, his Latin, his arithmetic. Always he is looking beyond himself, and learning. But one day, if he is like most men, he stops. He thinks he has learned all." He smiled at me."I did not choose to stop, that is all.”

“Of course he freaked me out. Of course it's nothing to do with me. But none of that matters. He loved me and now he doesn't. I was everything to him and now I am nothing.”

“You're still riding home with me right?" He asks Courtney watching me at the corner of his eye. What's with this guy? he looks like he's about one second from taking a baseballbat to my knees. Or wanting to. I wonder if this is how serial killers start out. Wasn't Unabomber really goos at math?”

“I could have told, just looking at him, that that was the tone he would use asking a question. A tone that took it for granted any question he asked was going to be answered because he asked it. I don't like it and I know of no way anybody is ever going to make me like it.”

“Look, I know this is the last thing you want to talk about, but I wanted to ask you . . . .” He trailed off, looking strangely uneasy.“Ask me . . . ?” Ask me to dinner? Ask me out for drinks? Ask me if I wanted to see what he looked like under that uniform? Yow, where’d that last one come from?”