“It was really true, there was no longer anything about him that could interest me. He wasn't even a fragment of the past, he was only a stain, like the print of a hand left years ago on a wall.”

“I tried to smile back. Now, don't get me wrong. Sam Carroll wasn't a creep or a bully or anything. It's just that he was... well, he was Sam Carroll, for goodness' sake. I'd only known him for forever and he'd only followed me around for even longer.”

“He was worried she would not let him love her with the stain. He had already decided long ago, twenty or thirty minutes ago, that the stain was fine. He had only seen it for a moment, but he was already used to it. It was good. It somehow allowed them to have more.”

“This wasn't going to last anyway. He'd have ended things in another fifty or sixty years with her. He'd never want anything permanent with her so this really didn't bother him. This was fine. This was more than fine, he thought as he drove his first through the wall.”

“He wondered if this, more than guilt, was what had been holding him back. It wasn't that he was punishing himself as much as it was that he didn't really want anything anymore. But was that true? Did he really not want anything? What did he want to do? What did he want, period?”

“He no longer cared about anything (as before) but now he also cared about everything in principle; that is to say, it was all the same to him and he belonged to the world and there was nothing he could do about it.”