“He lay in darkness, like a sacrifice; he could hear the teeth of his leprosy devouring his flesh. There was a smell of contempt around him, insisting on his impotence. But his lips were bowed in a placid smile, a look of fondness, as if he had come at last to approve his disintegration.”

“But then a bubbling tenor voice said kindly, "Do not fear. It is a dream." The reassurance spread over him like a blanket. But he could not feel it with his hands, and the ambulance kept on moving. Needing the blanket, he clenched at the empty air until his knuckles were white with loneliness.”

“Part of him wanted to weep... but his purpose was rigid within him. He felt he could not bend to gentleness without breaking.”

“The idea that his wedding band was some kind of talisman nauseated him like the smell of attar.”

“He who waits for the sword to fall upon his neck will surely lose his head.”

“But he could not call the doctors at the leprosarium. They would return him to Louisiana. They would treat him and train him and counsel him. They would put him back into life as if his illness were all that mattered, as if wisdom were only skin deep, as if grief and remorse and horror were nothing but illusions, tricks done with mirrors, irrelevant to chrome and porcelain and clean, white, stiff hospital sheets and fluorescent lights.”

“...the conflicts made him an indecisive mediator - a man, as someone had once observed, who couldn't keep his feet out of the shit on either side because he couldn't get the fencepost out of his ass.”