“Death, when it's right there it doesn't seem too huge and terrible to let into your mind.”

“Death preserves an ideal.”

“It's the fragment of your past that explains why you have lived your life the way you have done and made the mistakes that you have made”

“As well as remembering too little, I have seen too much”

“Let her be with her memories. Better that than be aware of this reality.”

“I am not afraid of death, which after all can't be far away. What does frighten me, though, is the halfway stage.”

“Like so many plain cups on the shelves. You can reach for them, use them without thinking. Most of them don't matter. Sometimes you lose your grip on one of them and it falls and smashes to piece, and you shrug and say to yourself, what a pity. Then you reach for the cup that you use every day, one that you love and use so often that as you stretch out your hand it is already making the shape that fits its curve. You are certain that yesterday it was in its proper place, but now there is nothing. Just air. You have lost something that was so familiar, so much a part of your life that you were not even looking for it. Just expecting it to be there, as always.”