“Let them leavelanguage to their lonely bettersWho count some days and long for cer-tain letters;We, too, make noises whenwe laugh orweep,Words are for those with promises tokeep.”

“We too often laughed at the same time to be a whore and a lonely guy.”

“In the first place, you shouldn't believe in promises. The world is full of them: the promises of riches, of eternal salvation, of infinite love. Some people think they can promise anything, others accept whatever seems to guarantee better days ahead, as, I suspect is your case. Those who make promises they don't keep end up powerless and frustrated, and exactly the fate awaits those who believe promises.”

“The body, I have often thought, is like a promise. You keep things in it. Those things are covert, immediate, yours. There is something lustrous about them. They emit energy, like radium or appliances. They can be replaced, repaired or simply discarded. The promise of the body is very firm and intact. It's the only promise we can count on, and we can't really count on it very much.”

“You string some letters together, and you make a word. You string some words together, and you make a sentence, then a paragraph, then a chapter. Words have power.”

“On and on we seal the pages with salt water and promises to live well to make their deaths count.”