Where is your mother, Charlie asked. Dead. I’m sorry to hear that Thank you. But she was always dead.

You put a wage behind something, it gives the act a sort of respectability.

Where is your mother, Charlie asked. Dead. I’m sorry to hear that Thank you. But she was always dead.

It is true, I thought. I am living a life.

Mayfield said, "You asked what I was thinking. Well, I will tell you. I was thinking that a man like myself, after suffering such a blow as you men have struck on this day, has two distinct paths he might travel in his life. He might walk out into the world with a wounded heart, intent on sharing his mad hatred with every person he passes; or, he might start out anew with an empty heart, and he should take care to fill it up with only proud things from then on, so as to nourish his desolate mind-set and cultivate something positive or new.

Your laughter is like cool water to me," I said. I felt my heart sob at these strange words, and it would not have been hard to summon tears: Strange. " "You are so serious all of a sudden," she told me. "I am not any one thing," I said. (137)

Here is another miserable mental image I will have to catalog and make room for.