“the writer:"a spy sent into life by the forces of death. His main objective is to get the information across the border, back into death. Then he can be given a mythic personality: 'he spent time among us, betrayed us, and took the material across the border.”

“She and I were bound together at the border between life and death. It was like that for us from the start”

“Music links us humans, heart to heart...Across time and space, and life and death.”

“Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination. ”

“As the death of the writer exaggerates the role of his work, the death of a person exaggerates the role of his effect on us.”

“For a long time I believed the opposite of passion was death. I was wrong. Passion and death are implicit, one in the other. Past the border of a fiery life lies the netherworld. I can trace this road, which took me through places so hot the very air burned the lungs. I did not turn back. I pressed on, and eventually passed over the border, beyond which lies a place that is wordless and cold, so cold that it, like mercury, burns a freezing blue flame.”