Senselessness

Quote

Chapter

“Four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives.”

1

“The Clutters were the least likely to be murdered.”

1

“I’d been too dazed, too numb, to feel the full viciousness of it. The suffering. The horror. They were dead. A whole family. Gentle, kindly people, people I knew – murdered.

You had to believe it, because it was really true.”

1

“I frisked the girl’s room, and I found a little purse, like a doll’s purse. Inside it was a silver dollar. I dropped it somehow, and it rolled across the floor. Rolled under a chair. I had to get down on my knees. And then it was like I was outside myself. Watching myself in some nutty movie. It made me sick. [. . . ] here I am crawling on my belly to steal a child’s silver dollar. One dollar. And I’m crawling on my belly to get it.”

3

“I knelt down beside Mr. Clutter and the pain of kneeling—I thought of that goddam dollar. Silver dollar. The shame. Disgust... But I didn’t realise what I’d done until I heard the sound. Like somebody drowning”

3

The Clutter robbery amounted to “between forty and fifty dollars.”

4