But his friendship with Jude made him feel that there was something real and immutable about who he was, that despite his life of guises, there was life of something elemental about him, something that Jude saw even when he could not, as if Jude's very witness of him made him real.
He couldn't remember being a child and being able to define happiness: there was only misery, or fear, and the absence of misery or fear, and the latter state was all he had needed or wanted.
...he would sometimes stand, barefoot, in the kitchen, everything quiet around him, and the small, ugly apartment would feel like a sort of marvel. Here, time was his, and space was his, and every door could be shut, every window locked.