“I'm standing in the lake, forming a whirlpool with my arms, letting the force of atonement pull me into its center until I cannot any longer hang onto my observations or any sense of myself, like dust and hydrogen clouds getting all excited white creating new stars to light the backyard. How poignantly emptiness cries out to be filled.”

“I feel like a jug in which wine is poured until it overflows.”

“My soft voice and demeanor were useless. In a pint jar, I carried a cremated friend, like flesh scraped from a cistern.”

“But my whole body is one pain. I cannot stand on my legs anymore. I stagger. I fall back on my bed. My eyes close and fill with smarting tears. I want to be crucified on the wall, but I cannot. My body becomes heavier and heavier and filled with sharper pain. My flesh is enraged against me.I hear voices through the wall. The next room vibrates with a distant sound, a mist of sound which scarcely comes through the wall.I shall not be able to listen anymore, or look into the room, or hear anything distinctly. And I, who have not cried since my childhood, I cry now like a child because of all that I shall never have. I cry over lost beauty and grandeur. I love everything that I should have embraced.”

“There's no animal that sleep-deprives itself like the human.”

“Proximity to this death makes me nostalgic for the French language.”

“We all came from our mothers' bellies. We all have hope in our veins. We don't want history to forget us, but the dead look after the afterwards.”