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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“She found herself thinking of how it would feel to be safely trapped in his arms, with no more possibility to choose.”

“It was strange to find them here, still alive, with their shared bits of past that suddenly counted for nothing.”

“No, what she had in front of her was a grown-up person who had built a life around a terrifying abyss, on terrain that had already collapsed, and yet who had succeeded, far away from here, among people Alice didn't know.”