“The scene was set. All that was required was an action, a cold start, instant and brutal as beginnings always are.”

“Do you really like studying?"Mattia nodded."Why?""It's the only thing I know how to do," he said shortly. He wanted to tell her that he liked studying because you can do it alone, because all the things you study are already dead, cold, and chewed over. He wanted to tell her that the pages of the schoolbooks were all the same temperature, that they left you time to choose, that they never hurt you and you couldn't hurt them either. But he said nothing.”

“That evening, getting up from the table, she had crossed the invisible boundary beyond which things start working by themselves.”

“With photography Alice liked the actions more than the results. She liked opening the back of the camera and unrolling the new film a couple of inches, just enough to catch it in the runner, and thinking that this empty film would soon become something and not knowing what, taking the first few snaps into the void, aiming, focusing, checking her balance, deciding whether to include or exclude pieces of reality as she saw fit, enlarging, distorting.”

“Numbers are everywhere," said Denis. "They're always the same, aren't they?""Yes.""But Alice is only here.""Yes.""So you've already made up your mind.”

“Mattia's voice no longer stirred anything in his stomach, but he was aware of the idea of him and always would be, as the only true benchmark for everything that had come afterward.”

“You'll get used to it. In the end you won't even notice it anymore," he said."How is that possible? It will always be there, right before my eyes.""Exactly," said Mattia. "Which is precisely why you won't see it anymore.”