“I'd lost count of the disappointments.”

“i thought about life, about my life, the embarrassments, the little coincidences, the shadows of alarm clocks on bedside tables, i thought about my small victories and everything i'd seen destroyed. i'd swum through mink coats on my parents' bed while they hosted downstairs, i'd lost the only person with whom i could have spent my only life, i'd left behind a thousand tonnes of marble from which i could have released sculptures, i could have released myself from the marble of myself, i'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? the end of suffering does not justify the suffering.”

“Later that year, when snow started to hide the front steps, when morning became evening as I sat on the sofa, buried under everything I'd lost, I made a fire and used my laughter for kindling: "Ha ha ha!" "Ha ha ha!" "Ha ha ha!”

“Their length could not be measured in years, just as an ocean could not explain the distance we have traveled, just as the dead can never be counted.”

“I'd left behind a thousand tons of marble, I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself. I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough?”

“I try not to remember the life that I didn’t want to lose but lost and have to remember”

“I wanted to tell her everything, maybe if I'd been able to, we could have lived differently, maybe I'd be there with you now instead of here. Maybe... if I'd said, 'I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything,' maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn't do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there.”