How we cite our quotes: (Record.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"I went downstairs and put my name down in the book for the outgoing Numbers, as everyone did. But I felt I lived separately from everybody; I lived by myself separated by a soft wall which absorbed noises; beyond that wall there was my own world." (18.6)
This is the punishment of keeping secrets: guilt and a sense of separation. In our world, we could live with it much more easily since we're used to deceit. But for D-503, it must feel like the end of the world.
Quote #8
You have, my dear, an abnormal, sickly look about you—since abnormality and sickliness are the same thing. You are ruining yourself—and no one will tell you so. (23.5)
This is interesting because it acknowledges the presence of deceit in the State. No one will tell him about his looks, and therefore, they're deceiving him. A little hypocritical in a society that stresses clarity, don't you think?
Quote #9
It just goes against nature for a thinking and seeing being to live among these irregularities and unknown X's. It is as if someone blindfolds you and then makes you walk around like that and you feel your way around, stumbling, and you know that there is an edge somewhere very nearby and that it would only that one step for the only thing left of you to be a flattened, mangled piece of meat. Isn't that just about the same thing I'm going through? (30.32)
Again, we're confronted with the possibility that reality itself is the deceiver and that D-503—having thought himself open and honest for his entire life—has actually been living a lie.