“He could sit in the dust and dark of the carriage house and rot for the rest of his life. Clearly that's what he wished to do. It was not my place to get in the way of so profound a destiny.”

“How did it happen that now he could see everything so clearly. Something had given him leave to live in the present. Not once in his entire life had he come to rest in the quiet center of himself but had forever cast himself from some dark past he could not remember to a future that did not exist. Not once had he been present for his life. So his life had passed like a dream. Is it possible for people to miss their lives the way one can miss a plane?”

“He invented stories so fantastic she had to believe. Of cours, she was only a child, still removing the dust from her first death. What else could she do? And he was already accumulating the dust of his second death. What else could he do? ”

“My attraction had been immediate and profound. And it had nothing to do with the way he looked. My attraction was to what resided between his lines.”

“Then he made one last effort to search in his heart for the place where his affection had rotted away, and he could not find it.”

“He—that's Simon Bolivar—was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes and his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness. Damn it," he sighed. "'How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!'"So what's the labyrinth?" I asked her."That's the mystery, isn't it? Is the labyrinth living or dying? Which is he trying to escape—the world or the end of it?”