Quotes - Part 2 of the arsonist revision.

“A lack of eye contact

can be due to… ‘sensory jumbling’, an inability to look at someone and listen to them at the same time.

“Brendan Sokaluk likely

inhabited an alternate reality.

“That was how it was

talking to Brendan: little scraps of fantasy, of make-believe; ideas from whatever cartoon he’d just watched.

“Selena was not

encountering the same person the police were. The Arson Squad detectives had decided his vagueness was an act, a claim the barrister found ridiculous.

“To them, his

apparent lack of remorse verged on sociopathy. But Brendan’s aloofness, his almost mechanical egocentrism, was what made her suspect there was more going on for him than an intellectual disability.

“What if

Brendan’s condition meant… that he had lit the fire and yet remained so alienated from his own self and actions that he didn’t completely grasp what he’d done?

“As Jane

Dixon tried to explain the [guilty] verdict to him, Brendan just went on asking when he could go home.