“The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years.”

“For weeks past he had been making ready for this moment, and it had never crossed his mind that anything would be needed except courage. The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years.”

“He was just a sixteen-year old boy who had been killed, a kid whose photo had been in the paper, a kid who would mostly be forgotten by the time the newspaper went into the garbage-yet he was the universe, all the dying, all the crying. He was everyone who had ever died young.”

“For this, that now was coming, he had very little curiosity. For years it had obseessed him; but now it meant nothing in itself. It was strange how easy being tired enough made it.Now he would never write the things he had saved to write, until he knew enough to write them well”

“What part of his being hunched over a sheaf of papers was sointeresting to her? Because that was all he had been doing all week.Perhaps he ought to liven up the spectacle. Really, it would be the kind thing to do. She had tobe bored silly.He could jump on his desk and sing.Take a bite of food and pretend to choke. What would she do, then?Now that would be an interesting moral dilemma.”

“He was full of the restless, dissatisfied energy that always seemed to move into his heart after he visited home these days. It had something to do with the knowledge that his parents’ house wasn’t truly home anymore — if it had ever been — and something to do with the realization that they hadn’t changed; he had.”