“...love / is turning out the lights when others do, a curfew we / would take / for sails.”

“This is freedom. This is the face of faith, nobody getswhat they want. Never again are you the same. The longingis to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more byeach glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself.Also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of somethingat sea. Here hands full of sand, letting it sift through in the wind, I look in and say take this, hurry. And if I listennow? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was onlysomething I did. I could not chose words. I am free to go.I cannot, of course, come back. Not to this. Never.It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.”

“This is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same. The longingis to be pure. What you get is to be changed.”

“Towards the end of the season it is not bad to have the body. To have experienced joy as the mere lifting of hunger is not to have known it less.”

“Lust is not the worst thing. It is because any day, any time, lust may turn into love that we have to avoid it. And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.”

“You don't bless what you love...It's when you want to love and you can't manage it. You stretch out your hands and you say God forgive me that I can't love but bless this thing anyway...We have to bless what we hate...It would be better to love, but that's not always possible.”

“I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn't settle to work. I would reconstruct what we had said to each other; I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing I loved out of my life. As long as I could make believe that love lasted I was happy; I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.”