“By now he was convinced that minutes were passing like seconds without his knowing it. From a great distance he could discern his ridiculousness. He could picture himself spending the rest of the night leaving footprints while cleaning his hands after filling footprints he’d left while cleaning his hands, but he also sensed the danger of picturing this. If he let his resolution be taken over by silliness, he was liable to put down the shovel and go back to the city and laugh at the idea of himself as a killer. Be the former Andreas, not the man he wanted to be now. He saw it clearly in those terms. He had to kill the man he’d always been, by killing someone else.”
—Jonathan Franzen