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"They were not friends. They didn't know each other. It struck Tom like a horrible truth, true for all time, true for the people he had known in the past and for those he would know in the future: each had stood and would stand before him, and he would know time and time again that he would never know them, and the worst was that there would always be the illusion, for a time, that he did know them, and that he and they were completely in harmony and alike. For an instant the wordless shock of his realization seemed more than he could bear."

"Tom laughed at the phrase "sexual deviation." Where was the sex? Where was the deviation? He looked at Freddie and said low and bitterly: "Freddie Miles, you're a victim of your own dirty mind."

'''"Mr Greenleaf was such a decent fellow himself, he took it for granted that everybody else in the world was decent, too. Tom had almost forgotten such people existed." '''

"I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody."

"Well, whatever you do, however terrible, however hurtful, it all makes sense, doesn't it? In your head. You never meet anybody that thinks they're a bad person."

"And that's the irony, Marge. I loved you. You may was well know it, Marge: I loved you. I don't know... maybe it's grotesque of me to say this now, so just write it on a piece of paper or something and put it in your purse for a rainy day. 'Tom loves me.' 'Tom loves me.'"