Clock Without Hands; Carson McCullers (Chapters 1 and 2)

"Malone did not understand.  Shock bewildered him and the room seemed suddenly cold.  He understood only that something strange and terrible was happening to him in the cold and swaying room.  He was mesmerized by the paper knife that the doctor turned in his stubby, scrubbed fingers.  A long dormant memory stirred so that he was aware of something shameful that had been forgotten, although the memory itself was still unclear.  So he suffered a parallel distress - the fear and tension of the doctor's words and the mysterious and unremembered shame." p. 3


"As he sat holding the pestle there was in him enough composure to wonder at those alien emotions that had veered so violently in his once mild heart.  He was split between love and hatred - but what he loved and what he hated was unclear.  For the first time he knew that death was near him.  But the terror that choked him was not caused by the knowledge of his own death.  The terror concerned some mysterious drama that was going on - although what the drama was about Malone did not know.  The terror questioned what would happen in those months - how long? - that glared upon his numbered days.  He was a man watching a clock without hands." p. 25

"But later a strange dissonance appeared, a jolt in the usual harmony, a sense of cross purposes and communication deflected and estranged." p. 27

"Jester asked, 'How?'
'Why, boy, I'm referring to segregation itself.'
'Why are you always harping on segregation?'
'Why, Jester, you're joking.'
Jester was suddenly serious. 'No, I'm not.'