“I wondered if she knew that everything she said made the other person feel like an idiot. I wondered if it was something she'd actually cultivated deliberately. I didn't think I could ever manage to make someone feel inferior.”

“How did the world ever manage without me before I was born?' he wondered. 'Didn't they feel something was missing?”

“It was the first time I had ever made love. I wondered if he knew that. It felt like crying. I wondered, Why does anyone ever make love?”

“Tomorrow I too - this feeling and thinking soul, the universe I am to myself - yes, tomorrow I too will be someone who no longer walks the streets, someone others will evoke with a vague: 'I wonder what's become of him?' And everything I do, everything I feel, everything I experience, will be just one less passer-by on the daily streets of some city or other.”

“I will write things, he was thinking. I will write something meaningful and wonderful someday. I can do that. And I'll dedicate it to you because you're the first person who ever made me think I could.”

“Usually while I lay in bed, I liked to think of new things I could do for Lynnie. Maybe I could let her try my pillow to see if she liked it better. Or I could bring her a new cracker she'd never tried. Or maybe I could even find a new book that she'd never heard of and read it to her, even though she had heard of every book in the world. That night I knew that nothing I could do would make her feel better. So I lay in bed and listened to her mournful noise and didn't feel love or hate or anger or anything at all except despair.”