“The words that I will have to find for that explanation will be sharp and they will hurt, much worse than the thorns of roses.”

“I can’t be forgiven so I am not asking you for forgiveness. We lost each other, and we will never find each other again.”

“I am not staying with the murderer," she said, her words muffled by his jacket. "I am not staying with the victim Abel Tannatek or the culprit Abel Tannatek. I am staying with the storyteller.”

“The place in her, though, where her tears should have come from, was rough and dry. No, she didn't find any tears in herself to cry for the storyteller.The storyteller didn't exist anymore.”

“Abel put his hands on her shoulders. "You're cold. You're shivering." She nodded. "It's not important..." "Sure it is," and then, in a very low voice, with a private kind of smile, he said, "Rose girl, I told you the branches would wither and you would freeze. You wanted to stay on board..." Anna nodded. "I'm staying.”

“She didn't know if this excitement was fueled by her ambition to find out something that nobody else knew. Or by the anticipation of finding out.”

“There was the place where all the shouted words fall into the water. They’re too weak to make it from shore to shore. I saw the words underwater, millions of them; they’re lying there on the bottom of the sea, a whole load of wrecked sentences, sentences that never reached their destination, questions from one side and answers from the other…”