“People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.”

“I was disquieted to realize that he had ceased to call me anything at all. That seemed impossible, but your children generally use your name when they want something, if only attention, and Kevin was loath to beseech me for so much as a turned head.”

“...You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.”

“Just cause you get used to something doesn't mean you like it." He added, snapping the magenta, "You're used to me.”

“Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.”

“He was already intuiting that attachment - if only to a squirt gun - made him vulnerable.”

“I didn't care about anything. And there's a freedom in apathy, a wild, dizzying liberation on which you can almost get drunk. You can do anything. Ask Kevin.”