“Then he realized it was the most natural thing in the world, which was precisely why he was incapable of it.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Why did you choose to stay here?" (...)"I don't know," he said. "It's as if there's more oxygen here.”

“Even though he was afraid to admit it, when he was with her it seemed it was worth doing all those normal things that normal people do.”

“It was another of the things he had left behind, another obvious step in a boy's life that he had decided not to take, so as to stay as far as possible from the machinery of life.”

“He collected the stories of people like himself, mostly keeping silent and listening. He slowly discovered that the stories were similar, that there was a process, and that the process involved immersion, putting your whole head under until you touched the bottom and only then coming up for air.”