I thought Gudmund being taken away was the worst thing could ever happen to me, but it wasn't. The worst was finding out he was never really all mine in the first place. And so, for a moment, for a terrible, unbelievably shitty afternoon in a shitty little town on the shitty, freezing coast of Washington, I had nothing. There wasn't anything more, and the one good thing that was mine wasn't mine after all.

Poor Codrus had nothing, it is true: but he lost that nothing, which was his all

Long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.

I had enjoyed something that did not belong to me, you see. When it was taken away, I was disappointed but not harmed.

Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never have had it?

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

It was really over, I thought. There was no way to go back, to make it stay. There was never that.

All good things pass away.

only one thing
made him happy
and now that
it was gone
everything
made him happy

I wanted it, I wanted, I wanted, but the moment it was mine, it ceased to interest me.

But I no longer had a taste for anything, a wish for anything, a love for anybody, a desire for anything whatever, any ambition, or any hope.

It was nothing more than what it was.

He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.

…nothing remained but loneliness and grief…