“And that was the point of children, thought Caroline Meddey: to bind us to the earth and to the present, to distract us from death.”

“A place to show her children: and you belong to the earth, and the earth is hard.”

“You belong to the earth and the earth is hard.”

“He regarded the world—objects right in front of his face—as if from a great distance. For when he moved on the earth he also moved in other realms. In certain seasons, in certain shades, memories alighted on him like sharp-taloned birds: a head turning in the foliage, lantern light flaring in a room.”

“The night has made up its mind. It’s we who are too slow, who move in the wake of events already decided for us, who refuse, who are too weak or too simple, or are perhaps, strictly, unable to understand”

“When he was a boy he was happy when the men arrived, and in a way wanted them to remain forever--but he was also anxious that they had arrived, that he was no longer alone. The sorrow came from those two feelings--the happiness of company, the anxiety of interrupted solitude. That was what he had felt, he thought, and what to some extent he still felt.”

“She revered solitude, but only because there was the possibility of breaking it. Of communing at last with another.”