“He couldn't remember having been seventeen; it was something that must have happened to him while he was busy. But it made him feel like he imagined it felt like when you were seventeen, which was like having a permanent red-hot vest on under your skin.”

“How old are you?”“Seventeen,” he answered promptly.“And how long have you been seventeen?”His lips twitched as he stared at the road. “A while,” he admitted at last.”

“And, like a fool, she kissed him back. Kissed him a way that would leave no doubt about the way she felt about him. Kissed him because she knew the chances were slim she'd have very many kisses like that in her lifetime. Which is a sad thing when you're only seventeen.”

“So this was the rest of his life. It felt like a party to which he'd been invited, but at an address he couldn't actually locate. Someone must be having fun at it, this life of his; only, right at the moment, it wasn't him.”

“Was it only because he happened to be the one who came along when he did? Could it have been anyone? Or was there something about him, that I liked and cared at?”

“The days went by for him, all different and all the same. The boy was happy, and yet he didn't know that he was happy, exactly: he couldn't remember having been unhappy. If one day as he played at the edge of the forest some talking bird had flown down and asked him: "Do you like your life" he would not have known what to say, but would have asked the bird: "Can you not like it?”