"Were?"
"After tonight, crowds will not matter."
"Because Homer will be dead?"
"Because Homer will be dead, poor beast. My conscience will be dead."
"What on earth does that mean? I find it impossible either to doubt you or to think of you as a boy any longer."
"That is because your mind is filled with uncertainties, mine with certainties. You have never before met anyone in whom certainty was a clear truth unquestioned on any level of any remote corner of the mind. I am such a one."
Phil sat down helplessly. There was no point in standing. Whatever Tim was, he was not going to be dominated by tricks.
"What are you?"
"What can I say? I am a book that is being read, yet I am neither the pages nor the printing on the pages, but only the meaning inherent in the shapes and sequences of the letters that comprise the printing."
"Can't you give me a straight answer?"