“I was not at ease that night. I was a prey to an immense distress. I sat as if I had fallen into my chair. As on the first day I looked at my reflection in the glass, and all I could do was just what I had done then, simply cry, "I!”

“I never reasoned on what I should do, but what I had done; as if my Reason had her eyes behind, and could only see backwards.”

“I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so?”

“I had never wanted attention, and now I waspurposely inviting it. As I had told Dr Duverger, I had little vanity, and yet one recentmorning I realized that I was avoiding looking at my own reflection, because it wasdisturbing. Did I wish to go through life like this? Yes, the scar was a horrible mementoof what I had done to my father, but now I questioned whether I needed it to be soobvious. The actual weight was within me. I carried it as though it were a heavyearthenware pot of water. I had to walk through my days carefully, so as not to let it spillover. It was my own personal burden, not necessary to be shared with all who looked atme.”

“She was beginning to stir questions in me that I'd spent all my life refusing to ask, since the day I had looked down from the window at the broken body of the schoolboy on the flagstones a long way below, while a master hurried from the cloisters with his black gown flapping in the winter wind, to see what had happened: the day when I was suddenly old enough to understand that I had a choice. I could either do what that other boy had done, or I could spend the rest of my life outside society, where it was safe”

“What preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way?”