Bill: "Because of the light you bear? Did you ever consider the possibility that it's a handicap? One that blinds you to the most obvious of truths, that you are an Abomination? Just like the vampire Bible states?"
Sookie: "Bill, I don't know what you're talking about, nobody knows what you're talking about. That was some really inelegant ranting. But I'll tell you something. You are certainly stronger than this. You are capable of sympathy, and kindness, and generosity. You are unique, among all the vampires I have met. Don't throw that away."

And then a funny thing happens, because he explains very eloquently exactly why he has to. His entire story, from his first birth to his second one, assumes a very different and a very sad shape, but a compelling one, shaped like the whole world:

"I have spent my entire life as a vampire apologizing, believing I was inherently wrong somehow. Living in fear, fear that God had forsaken me. That I was damned. But Lilith grants us freedom from fear. Vicissitudes 9:24, Fear not, for my blood is beyond fear -- fear of sin, fear of mankind, fear of retribution -- for thou art begat by God. And this world is but a spring to slake thy sacred thirst."

They can't believe him, because it sounds so crazy; they can't believe him because they love him. But it's true. Our Bill is the opposite of the real Bill Compton, no less real for all that, but a shadow just the same. And the whole time he was crippling himself he told himself it was for us, for the right reasons, for the good of the world, and it was bullshit. He took Jason's way out, he took Hoyt's way out. He took everything that was true and shining about himself and pushed it way down, shattered it into sparks. And the more he crippled himself out here, in the world, the Other Bill was down there in the well, getting stronger and fiercer and realer and meaner and scarier, and more and more twisted. Convinced the cup is more important than what's inside; crushed into a diamond by the pressure down there.

What Tara Thornton did to the little black-eyed girl -- what the witches did to Eric Northman -- Bill did to William Compton a hundred years earlier, and a million times better. And he's been doing it the whole time, all of it under their noses. Without even his knowledge. And that is sad, and it's sickening, and it needs to end. Even Tara was eventually allowed to die, because nobody deserves that. It isn't generous and it isn't true, it's just disgusting. "You cannot hurt the world," sure, but you sure as shit can hurt yourself.