“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”

“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.”

“I was not prepared: sunset, end of summer. Demonstrations of time as a continuum, as something coming to an end, not a suspension: the senses wouldn’t protect me. I caution you as I was never cautioned: you will never let go, you will never be satiated.You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger. Your body will age, you will continue to need. You will want the earth, then more of the earth–Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond. It is encompassing, it will not minister. Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you, it will not keep you alive.”

“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. ”

“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.”

“Lived to see you throwingMe aside. That foughtlike netted fish inside me. Saw you throbbingIn my syrups. Saw you sleep. And lived to seeThat all flushed downThe refuse. Done?It lives in me.You live in me. Malignant.Love, you ever want me, don’t.”

“I watched the first shoots like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly multiplying in the rows. I doubtyou have a heart, in our understanding of that term. You who do not discriminate between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence, immune to foreshadowing...”