“Even here is something sad and terrible. But the impression is fleeting, and serves only to give a greater acuteness to the enjoyment of the moment. It is like the sadness which you may see in the jester's eyes when a merry company is laughing at his sallies; his lips smile and his jokes are gayer because in that communion of laughter he find himself more intolerably alone.”

“How long?"His smile was amazingly sweet. "The longest."For ever?"Sam's lips smiled, but above his grin, his yellow eyes turned sad, as if he knew it was a lie. "Longer.”

“I lock onto his beautiful blue eyes, memorizing his face. The way his eyes crinkle at the corners when he laughs, the way they flash blue when he's happy and grow dark when he's sad. I'll miss his flop of dark hair and his dimples when he smiles.”

“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.”

“He lit his pipe again, smiling to himself quietly, with that painful smile of his, as though he were enjoying a joke that hurt him.”

“He smiles a small smile. His lips twitch like he's trying not to laugh. His eyes soften as they study my own. "There's very little I wouldn't do for you.”