“From the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved.”

“He takes her in his armsHe wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt youBut he thinksthis is a lie, so he says in the endYou're dead, nothing can hurt youwhich seems to hima more promising beginning, more true.”

“Gretel in Darkness:This is the world we wanted.All who would have seen us deadare dead. I hear the witch's crybreak in the moonlight through a sheetof sugar: God rewards.Her tongue shrivels into gas....Now, far from women's armsAnd memory of women, in our father's hutwe sleep, are never hungry.Why do I not forget?My father bars the door, bars harmfrom this house, and it is years.No one remembers. Even you, my brother,summer afternoons you look at me as thoughyou meant to leave,as though it never happened.But I killed for you. I see armed firs,the spires of that gleaming kiln--Nights I turn to you to hold mebut you are not there.Am I alone? Spieshiss in the stillness, Hanselwe are there still, and it is real, real,that black forest, and the fire in earnest.”

“I think I can rememberbeing dead. Many times, in winter,I approached Zeus. Tell me, I would ask him,how can I endure the earth?”

“We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.”

“Why love what you will lose?There is nothing else to love.”

“Without thinking, I knelt in the grass, like someone meaning to pray. When I tried to stand again, I couldn't move,my legs were utterly rigid. Does grief change you like that?Through the birches, I could see the pond.The sun was cutting small white holes in the water.I got up finally; I walked down to the pond. I stood there, brushing the grass from my skirt, watching myself,like a girl after her first loverturning slowly at the bathroom mirror, naked, looking for a sign.But nakedness in women is always a pose.I was not transfigured. I would never be free. ”