He took each fact as it came and let it slip painlessly into the back of his mind, thinking, Okay, okay, I'll think about that one later; and that one; and that one; so that the alert, front part of his mind could remain free enough to keep him in command of the situation.

It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity.

The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy. Even at night, as if on purpose, the development held no looming shadows and no gaunt silhouettes. It was invincibly cheerful, a toyland of white and pastel houses whose bright, uncurtained windows winked blandly through a dappling of green and yellow leaves … A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place.

In avoiding specific goals he had avoided specific limitations. For the time being the world, life itself, could be his chosen field.

Warren Cox, God knew, was no prize; a commercial person, a sales person, the kind of man who said things like "x numbers of dollars". At lunch today, laboriously trying to explain some business procedure, he had said "x number of dollars" three times.

God knows there certainly ought to be a window around here somewhere, for all of us.

You're painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture.