“You have punished me long enough, you have punished yourself long enough. Return to me. I beg.”

“I was wondering how you were going to punish me for not confiding in you. Punishment, actually, is something I've thought about for a long time. What form of punishment would be enough for what I did? Imprisonment? Death? Something else? Something scarier? I could only think of so many horrible tortures before they stopped having meaning. But you' you've come up with a punishment I never considered. You're going to sulk me to death.”

“You must live long enough to remember your mistake. That is your punishment. That is your destiny.”

“God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.”

“How long does it have to go on? This punishment? Haven't I done time enough, haven't I served my term? can't I apply for a-pardon?”

“And if you sat at the dinner table long enough, whether in punishment or in refusal or simply in boredom, you never stopped sitting there. Some part of you sat there all your life.”