“I once offered to give part of my lung to a dying boy,” he told her.
“Why would you do that?” she asked. “That’s serious. Please don’t ever do that.”
“I wanted to prove I was a good person,” he said. “I wanted to repair a broken friendship and to restore myself to my shul. I wanted to save the boy. I knew him.”
“I”ve long wanted to give a kidney,” she said. “Down deep, I feel like I am not a good person, and if I gave a kidney, then I would prove to myself that I was a good person. But my brother the doctor has talked me out of it.”
“Yeah,” he said, “after all the alcohol and drugs you’ve done, the hep C, you want to hold on to your kidney. That’s probably why you are so radical in your politics.
“Can you imagine what it is like to know that you are a good person? Can you imagine the serenity that would come with a virtuous life? Something that neither of us know.”
“Nietzsche wrote about this,” she said. “He asked, who sleeps well at night? Is it the person who is honest in business? He traced it all out and said that that it was thieves and evildoers who sleep best at night.”
