“Hardly anything remained of which he could speak aloud.”

“The harmony of two bodies expressed in this single touch, bridging their differences and bending their moral reserve, was as powerful and wild asphysical fulfillment, yet there was nothing false in this harmony, noillusion created that just by touching, our bodies could express feelingsthat rationality prevented us from making permanent; I might even say thatour bodies cooly preserved their good sense, scheming and keeping eachother in check, as if to say, I'll yield unreservedly to the madness ofthe moment but only if and when you do the same; but this physical pleafor passion and reason, spontaneity and calculation, closeness anddistance, took our bodies past the point where, clinging to desire andstriving for the moment of gratification, they would seek a new and more complete harmony.”

“By fantasizing one builds a more predictable world, and then one has no time to notice what is really happening, because of the din made by one's expectations crashing down.”

“That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking.”

“In all outward aspects he remained patient and mild now, not caring even to speak against heretics; he knew that he was likely to die soon enough, but the prospect of death was not an unwelcome one (...). More retained his hair shirt as he dwelled in his chamber, and is reported to have whipped himself for penitence; he fasted on the appointed days, sang hymns and prayed both day and night.”

“He were still smiling but his voice were hard as a spoon rattling in a metal cup.”

“To feel our character, our personality, and our personal, hard-won history fade from being is to be exposed to whatever lies beneath these comforting, operational conveniences. What remains when the conscious and functioning self has been erased is mankind's fundamental condition – irrational, violent, guilt-wracked, despairing, and mad.”