But shame was a very old habit with him. He had long considered it penitential, payment extracted in the form of steady, tolerable misery, against a debt he would never settle. He was even a little loyal to it, as if it assured him there was justice in the universe.

“I’m a simple man who was brought up by a complicated man. So I have mannerisms and so on. Vocabulary. People can be misled.”

Forever after, the thought of her would be painful, because it had been pleasant. Strange how that is.

Flourishing seemed wrong in a man so disheartened as he was.

The knowledge of good. That half of the primal catastrophe received too little attention. Guilt and grace met together in the phrase despite all that. He could think of himself as a thief sneaking off with an inestimable wealth of meaning and trust, all of it offended and damaged beyond use, except to remind him of the nature of the crime. Or he co

Cleverness has a special piquancy when it blooms out of the fraying sleeve of failure.

“Meaninglessness would come as a terrible blow to most people. It would be full of significance for them. So it wouldn’t be meaningless. That’s where I always end up. Once you ask if there is meaning, the only answer is yes. You can’t get away from it.”

“I think most people feel a difference between their real lives and the lives they have in the world. But they ignore their souls, or hide them, so they can keep things together, keep an ordinary life together. You don’t do that. In your own way, you’re kind of—pure.”

He had found he could accept reproof from anybody who was not dead drunk and be no better for it, unless the discomfort involved was actually payment against outstanding debt. This thought may actually have comforted him, since debt can be reduced, unless it involves interest of some kind, which would be a way of understanding the steady accumulati