“My father’sabsence was an unspoken void that lived within ourwalls, and although I longed for the day I, too, would fallin love, I was fearful. What if the person who wouldsomeday hold my heart disappeared too?”

“My heart is too thoroughly dried to be broken in a hurry, and I mean to live as long as I can.”

“My breathing is controlled, but all the fear and anger within me. Fear is too simple a word. Terror. That's what I feel.”

“She was crazy. I could be too. It was my greatest fear, that I'd snap one day too. Just like she had. I wanted to live life because if that day came I wanted to have lived once.”

“From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to give up; I wanted to give up on living. There was no denying that tomorrow would come, and the day after tomorrow, and so next week, too. I never thought it would be this hard, but I would go on living in the midst of a glomy depression, and that made me feel sick to the depths of my soul. In spite of the tempest raging within me, I walked the night path calmly.”

“Women want everything of a lover. And too often I would sink below the surface. So armies disappear under sand. And there was her fear of her husband, her belief in her honour, my old desire for self-sufficiency, my disappearances, her suspicions of me, my disbelief that she loved me. The paranoia and claustrophobia of hidden love.”