How we cite our quotes: In consultation with my editor, we decided (against standard practice) to go with page numbers—since The Sunset Limited is one long act and it would be unwieldy and impractical to number all the lines.
Quote #7
WHITE: […] The truth is that the forms I see have been slowly emptied out. They no longer have any content. They are shapes only. A train, a wall, a world. Or a man. A thing dangling in senseless articulation in a howling void. No meaning to its life. Its words. Why would I seek the company of such a thing? Why? (139)
In the depths of his isolation, White has started to see the world as genuinely meaningless. In a way, it's a little like the way Bartleby the Scrivener sees the world in the Melville story of that title. To Bartleby, the world appears to be like a giant opaque wall, with no meaningful markings or any signage posted on it—life is completely devoid of purpose and endlessly obscure.