“What was difficultwas the travel, which,on arrival, is forgotten.”

“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.”

“The master said You must write what you see.But what I see does not move me.The master answered Change what you see.”

“Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond—surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjectsto which my predecessors apprenticed themselves.I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention.”

“To raise the veil.To see what you're saying goodbye to.”

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

“Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,the dreamed as well as the lived—what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?”