He couldn't even tell whether he was angry or contrite, whether it was forgiveness he wanted or the power to forgive.

He couldn't even tell whether he was angry or contrite, whether it was forgiveness he wanted or the power to forgive.

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.

Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.

He found it so easy and so pleasant to cry that he didn’t try to stop for a while, until he realized he was forcing his sobs a little, exaggerating their depth with unnecessary shudders. … The whole point of crying is to quit before you coined it up. The whole point of grief itself was to cut it out while it was still honest, while it still meant something. Because the thing was so easily corrupted

Can you really think artists and writers are the only people entitled to lives of their own?

The hell with "love" anyway, and with every other phony, time-wasting, half-assed emotion in the world.