“He could hear Donald saying something else but it didn't matter anymore what, because then and there it occurred to him that maybe the emptiness he'd been living with all this time hadn't really been emptiness at all, but loneliness gone unrecognized. How can a mind know how alone it is until it brushes up against some other mind? A single mark had been made, another person's memory imposed onto his mind, and now the magnitude of his own loss was impossible for Samson to ignore. It was breathtaking. He sank to his knees...It was as if a match had been struck, throwing light on just how dark it was.”

“He purchased that great canvas also bearing the likeness to his beloved, for he could not bear another to look upon what he dreamed each night...but as he now had enjoyed the quite singular pleasure of his wife's true form revealed to him, he knew he would have [it] returned... At one time he had thought it quite impossible, but now he understood how truly inadequate the vision cast by his mind's eye had been.”

“He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer. No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit.”

“They saw him walk away, leave a world he'd never really been part of. They saw him pull his hat down low and get onto his bike. He forgot the Walkman's earplugs. Maybe, Anna thought, he didn't need them anymore; maybe the white noise had finally made it into his head.”

“If there had been any doubt in her mind that John hadn't placed some emotional claim on her, then it was gone in that second. Pure male possession marked his kiss.”

“The difference between what he had been then and what he now was, was enormous...Then he was free and fearless...now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life...He remembered how proud he was at one time of his straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the truth...and he was now sunk deep in lies...lies considered as truth by all who surrounded him.”