“That’s how it felt – that the loss of him had a life of its own. I lived with it as I could have lived with him. Some nights it was quiet and sometimes it pounded on my door.”

“How had it turned into this? I had lived my whole stupid life without him, and now I could barely make it through the hour.”

“I realized I was afraid of living without him. How is it you have the right to destroy my life, I wanted to demand of him, but I’m not allowed a say in yours?But I had promised.”

“I looked at him and did not answer; there flashed through my mind a quick, running picture of all the squalid hovels in which I had lived and it made me feel more than ever a stranger as I stood before him. How could I have told him that I had learned to curse before I had learned to read? How could I have told him that I had been a drunkard at the age of six?”

“My boots were so heavy that I was glad there was a column beneath us. How could such a lonely person have been living so close to me my whole life? If I had known, I would have gone up to keep him company.”

“If I should choose between the life I lived or a life without the sorrows I felt, I would spend everyday the same. For without those sorrows, I may have never had him.”