“People eyed one another suspiciously, and the streets smelled of a silence that knotted your stomach.”

“The air seemed poisoned with fear and hatred. People eyed on another suspiciously, and the streets smelled of a silence that knotted your stomach.”

“There was another silence, of the kind in which gray hairs seem to creep up on you.”

“I decided that my existence would be one of books and silence.”

“Life on the streets is short. People look at you in disgust, even the ones who give you alms, but this is nothing compared to the revulsion you feel for yourself. It's like being trapped in a walking corpse, a corpse that's hungry, stinks, and refuses to die.”

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

“Myths and legends, either about divinities or the formation and history of peoples and races, began to look like pictures on a jigsaw puzzle, slightly different from one another but always built with the same pieces, though not in the same order.”