— Blake, she was pregnant. You gunned her down.
— Yeah, that's right. Pregnant woman. Gunned her down. Bang. And y'know what? You watched me. You could've changed the gun into steam or the bullets into mercury or the bottle into snowflakes! (...) You really don't give a damn about human beings, do you.
Never cared for what they say,
Never cared for games they play,
Never cared for what they do,
Never cared for what they know.
There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are—my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks—we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.
And he remembered thinking then that if she died, he was certain he wouldn't cry. For it would be the dying of an unknown, a street face, a
newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death, a
silly empty man near a silly empty woman, while the hungry snake made her still more empty.
Better scream than be indifferent.
People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Ashley, you should've told me years ago that you loved her and not me. And not left me dangling with your talk of honor. But you had to wait till now, now when Melly's dying... to show me that I could never mean any more to you than this Watling woman does to Rhett. And I've loved something that doesn't really exist. But somehow... I don't care. Somehow it doesn't matter! It doesn't matter one bit.
As an indifference cherished, or left to atrophy, becomes an emptiness.