“Sleep is a prison for a boy who has friends to meet.”

“I believe this. When we meet those we fall in love with, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian, a bit of a pedant who reminisces or remembers a meeting when the other has passed by innocently…but all parts of the body must be ready for the other, all atoms must jump in one direction for desire to occur.”

“A love story is not about those who lost their heart but about those who find that sullen inhabitant who, when it is stumbled upon, means the body can fool no one, can fool nothing—not the wisdom of sleep or the habit of social graces. It is a consuming of oneself and the past.”

“All his life he has avoided permanent intimacy. Till this war he has been a better lover than husband. He has been a man who slips away, in the way lovers leave chaos, the way thieves leave reduced houses.”

“July 1936There are betrayals in war that are childlike compared with our human betrayals during peace. The new lover enters the habits of the other. Things are smashed, revealed in new light. This is done with nervous or tender sentences, although the heart is an organ of fire.A love story is not about those who lose their heart but about those who find that sullen inhabitant who, when it is stumbled upon, means the body can fool no one, can fool nothing - not the wisdom of sleep or the habit of social graces. It is a consuming of oneself and the past.”

“The Time Around Scars:A girl whom I've not spoken toor shared coffee with for several yearswrites of an old scar.On her wrist it sleeps, smooth and white,the size of a leech.I gave it to herbrandishing a new Italian penknife.Look, I said turning,and blood spat onto her shirt.My wife has scars like spread raindropson knees and ankles,she talks of broken greenhouse panesand yet, apart from imagining red feet,(a nymph out of Chagall)I bring little to that scene.We remember the time around scars,they freeze irrelevant emotionsand divide us from present friends.I remember this girl's face,the widening rise of surprise.And would shemoving with lover or husbandconceal or flaunt it,or keep it at her wrista mysterious watch.And this scar I then rememberis a medallion of no emotion.I would meet you nowand I would wish this scarto have been given withall the lovethat never occurred between us. ”

“I am someone who has a cold heart. If I am beside a great grief I throw barriers up so the loss cannot go too deep or too far. There is a wall instantly in place, and it will not fall.”