“As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which then I shall be.”

“The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.”

“My being subsists only from a supreme point of view which is precisely incompatible with my point of view. The perspective in which I fade away for my eyes restores me as a complete image for the unreal eye to which I deny all images. A complete image with reference to a world devoid of image which imagines me in the absence of any imaginable figure. The being of a nonbeing of which I am the infinitely small negation which it instigates as its profound harmony. In the night shall I become the universe?”

“There was no confusion of our bodies. I knew which arm was his and which mine, and which leg, and which shoulder. I did not lose track and kiss my own arm, or whatever came near my mouth. THe smallest motion did not immediately lead to another motion. It was not endless, I did not go more and more deeply into my body and his body as though to go as far as possible from my mind, and his mind, so conscious, so unrelenting. It did not end while it was still in the middle.”

“I may be older and wiser, I may have lived another life since then, but I know that when my time eventually comes, the memories of that day will be the final images that float through my mind. I still love her, you see, and I‟ve never removed my ring. In all these years I‟ve never felt the desire to do so.”

“When I come to the end of my life ― when I come to the real end, at the right time, my mind may flash with random images... But I am not being hopeful about this when I say my last thoughts will be of love.”