“and realized that death was not only a permanent probability, as he had always believed, but an immediate reality.”

“No: that fear had been inside him for manyyears, it had lived with him, it had been another shadow cast over hisown shadow ever since the night he awoke, shaken by a bad dream,and realized that death was not only a permanent probability, as hehad always believed, but an immediate reality.”

“Ceasing to believe caused a permanent scar in the place where one's faith had been, making it impossible to forget.”

“And only after he said it did he realize that among the countless suicides he could remember, this was the first with cyanide that had not been caused by the sufferings of love. Then something changed in the tone of his voice.“And when you do find one, observe with care,” he said to the intern:“they almost always have crystals in their heart.”

“He always considered death an unavoidable professional hazard.”

“He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.”

“For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.”