“The tree had been dead a long time, but itseemed to live again in the fire”

“The forest has been growing for hundreds of years. Each time a child is born, a tree is planted. You could see from his tree how old a person was. The tall and thick tree trunks, which gave the most shade, belonged to people who had already returned to the spirit world. But the trees of the living and the dead stood in the same grove, sought their nourishment from the same soil and the same rain. They stood there waiting for the children that were not yet born, the trees that had not yet been planted. In that way the forest would grow, and the age of the village would be visible for all time. No one could tell from a tree whether someone was dead, only that he had been born.”

“It had been a hell of a long time since he had been reduced to hiding behind a tree, and he did not view it as much of a professional achievement.”

“It is time for me to be dead for a little while - and then live again.”

“At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.”

“If Rome, a city of the vulgar living, had been depressing after Greece, London, a city of the drab dead, was fifty times worse. ”