# Quote — Tom McCarthy, Remainder

> In the part of the night where it's quietest, around three or four o'clock, I started wondering where this black man's soul had disappeared to as it left his body. His thoughts, impressions, memories, whatever: the background noise we all have in our head that stops us from forgetting we're alive. It had to go somewhere: it couldn't just vaporize—it must have gushed, trickled or dripped onto some surface, stained it somehow. Everything must leave some kind of mark.

- Author: [Tom McCarthy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-mccarthy.md)
- Book: [Remainder](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-mccarthy/remainder.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tom_McCarthy_(writer)#Remainder_(2005)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-mccarthy/remainder/in-the-part

## More from this book

> Poor Naz. He wanted everything to be perfect, neat, wanted all matter organized and filed away so that it wasn't mess. He had to learn too: matter's what makes us alive—the bitty flow, the scar tissue, signature of the world's very first disaster and promissory note guaranteeing its last. Try to iron it out at your peril.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-mccarthy/remainder/poor-naz-he-wanted.md)

> It struck me as I waited that all great enterprises are about logistics. Not genius or inspiration or flights of imagination, skill or cunning, but logistics. Building pyramids or landing spacecraft on Jupiter or invading whole continents or painting divine scenes over the roofs of chapels: logistics.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-mccarthy/remainder/it-struck-me.md)

> Surplus matter. I'd forgotten all about that phrase, those classes—even before the accident, I mean. After the accident I forgot everything. It was as though my memories were pigeons and the accident a big noise that had scared them off. They fluttered back eventually—but when they did, their hierarchy had changed, and some that had had crappy places before ended up with better ones: I remembered them more clearly; they seemed more important.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-mccarthy/remainder/surplus-matter-id-forgotten.md)