Uma fala de «Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf», 1966

[George]When I was 16...and going to prep school, during the Punic Wars...a bunch of us used to go to town the first day of vacation...before we fanned out to our homes. And in the evening this bunch of us would go to a gin mill...owned by the gangster father of one of us... and we would drink with the grownups and listen to the jazz. And one time, in the bunch of us...there was this boy who was 15... and he had killed his mother with a shotgun some years before. Accidentally. Completely accidentally... without even an unconscious motivation, I have no doubt. No doubt at all. And this one time, this boy went with us... and we ordered our drinks. And when it came his turn, he said: "I'll have 'bergin.' Give me some bergin, please. Bergin and water." We all laughed.
He was blond and he had the face of a cherub, and we all laughed. And his cheeks went red, and the color rose in his neck. The waiter told people at the next table what the boy had said and they laughed...and then more people were told and the laughter grew... and more people, and more laughter. And no one was laughing more than us... and none of us more than the boy who had shot his mother. Soon everyone in the gin mill knew what the laughter was about...and everyone started ordering bergin and laughing when they ordered it. Soon, of course, the laughter became less general...but did not subside entirely for a very long time. For always at this table or that...someone would order bergin...and a whole new area of laughter would rise. We drank free that night. And we were bought champagne by the management. By the gangster father of one of us. And, of course, we suffered next day...each of us alone, on his train away from the city...and each of us with a grownup's hangover. But it was the grandest day...of my...youth.
[Nick]What...?What happened to the boy? The boy who had shot his mother.
[George] I won't tell you. All right. The following summer on a country road, with his learner's permit...and his father on the front seat to his right, he swerved to avoid a porcupine...and drove straight into a large tree. He was not killed, of course. In the hospital, when he was conscious and out of danger... and when they told him his father was dead... he began to laugh, I have been told.
His laughter grew and would not stop. And it was not until after they jammed a needle in his arm...not until his consciousness had slipped away from him... that his laughter subsided and stopped.