“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.”

“As I saw it, all my mother's life, my father held her down, like lead strapped to her ankles.She wasbuoyant by nature;she wanted to travel,go to the theater, go to museums.What he wantedwas to lie on the couchwith the Timesover his face,so that death, when it came,wouldn't seem a significant change.”

“Tonight I saw myself in the dark window asthe image of my father, whose lifewas spent like this,thinking of death, to the exclusionof other sensual matters,so in the end that lifewas easy to give up, sinceit contained nothing: evenmy mother's voice couldn't make himchange or turn backas he believedthat once you can't love another human beingyou have no place in the world. ”

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

“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?”

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

“Like a child, the earth's going to sleep,or so the story goes. But I'm not tired, it says.And the mother says, You may not be tired but I'm tired”