What the story records, ultimately, is the deep fear I once carried about my loneliness and what it could do.

He endured it to punish himself, and to prove to himself that he could; those were the only two reasons he ever chose to do anything worthwhile.

Dying turned it into something else, fluids and electricity—membrane and follicles and little hollow bones. He knew even as a child that it would be kinder to kill it, but he didn’t know how, so he just watched until it was over.

“For instance, as rigid as your definition of ‘moral laziness’ is, I did notice a tendency for it to expand conveniently to encompass every moral framework you don’t agree with.”

Julian’s silence was as good as a confession. His face was so blank that Paul could read anything he wanted in his features. He chose disgust.

That class makes me so angry”—a sharp, nervous laugh, anger and panic burning inside him—“because—it’s just—I’m getting plenty of empirical evidence toward my hypothesis, that the worst damage humans do isn’t rooted in malice but in thoughtlessness.”

I hope you looked west while I was looking east, and that for a moment you met my eyes without knowing it. I know you never look away, even when your eyes are closed, but I’m never certain you can see what’s really there.

But they liked him best, all three of them, when they could see the part of him that was shy. Everything about him that worried them could be explained by shyness, benignly and cleanly. He just couldn’t slip up and let them see any shard of truth that might complicate it.

It isn’t just that the young man of means is conditioned to obey (though he certainly is—Daddy always knows best, and the nice fellow in the white coat probably does, too). It’s that he is also conditioned not to particularly care about the collateral damage of his obedience.