“Should a man,to preserve his life, pay everything that gives life colour,scentand excitement? Can one accept a life of digestion,respiration, muscularand brain activity-and nothingmore? 'Become a walking blueprint? Is this not anexorbitant price? Is it not a mockery? Should one pay? Seven years in the army and seven years in the camp,twice seven years twice that mythical or biblical term,then to be deprived of the ability to tell what is a man and what is a woman--is not a price extortionate?”

“Tillie studied her mother’s face. The face which had seen thirty-seven years of life. Twenty-one years of marriage. The birth of ten babies. The death of one.”

“I walked into a bakery seven years later and there he was. He had dogs at his feet and a bird in a cage beside him. The seven years were not seven years. They were not seven hundred years. Their length could not be measured in years, just as an ocean could not explain the distance we had traveled, just as the dead can never be counted. I wanted to run away from him, and I wanted to go right up to him.”

“If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head.”

“Everything comes at a price. Everthing in your life. The question you have to ask yourself is, what price are you willing to pay?”

“One's life is a heavy price to pay for being born.”