“And the snow that fell onto the roof in winter... it fell softly... softly... and it covered the house, the armchair, the books, the children's voices. It covered Anna and Abel, covered their parallel world, and everything was finally, very, very quiet.”

“No soft-skinned, lace-covered, dandified profligate would ever take this house and make it his.Ever.”

“Moonlight knew no colors and traced the contours of the terrain only very softly. It covered the land a dirty gray, strangling life all night long. This world molded in lead, where nothing moved but the wind that fell sometimes like a shadow over the gray forests, and where nothing lived but the scent of the naked earth, was the only world he accepted, for it was much like the world of his soul.”

“The snow fell straight and slow, adding another layer to the drifts and covering roads, trees, bushes, and bodies, the living and the dead as one beneath its veil.”

“The sensation reminds him of the first snow of winter, for those first few hours when everything is blanketed in white, soft and quiet.”

“My steps were muffled. It was quiet, so quiet that I felt as if I did not walk but instead crawled in silence. The snow covered everthing and I walked above cotton, on silent carpets, on beach sand. Softness is temporary and deceiving. It gently receives you and gently expels you.”