“I carried the trace of her lips, of her breath on my skin through streets full of faceless people escaping from offices and shops.”

“She wore an ivory-white dress and held the world in her eyes. I barely remember thepriest's words or the faces of the guests, full of hope, who filled the church on that Marchmorning. All that remains in my memory is the touch of her lips and, when I half openedmy eyes, the secret oath I carried with me and would remember all the days of my life.”

“ I knew then that I would devote every minute we had left together to making her happy, to repairing the pain I had caused her and returning to her what I never known how to give her. These pages will be our memory until she drows her last breath in my arms and I take her forever and escape at last to a place where neither heaven nor hell will ever be able to find us. ”

“I bent over her and kissed her lips. She embraced me, and we remained like that as the light from the candle sputtered then went out.”

“In the haunted shade of the Ateneo, her hands wrote a curse on my skin that was to hound me for years.”

“She was seventeen, her entire life shining on her lips.”

“I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.”