“The trees part before her slender form and close in again behind me. The roads weave a vast labyrinth, and I am lost.”

“I am terrified by the dizzying pleasure of it: I am both here and over there; I am be and I am no longer me!Am I already dead?”

“Years have passed and how I am anxiously watching the twilight of my childhood, quietly sinking, never to rise again.”

“To other women the choice of clothes was a form of ingenious exhibition, a shameless seduction. To me, dresses were like a breastplate that I put on to set off to war against this life.”

“I envied these women I saw before me, their beauty still intact. Life has its revenge of life. Untimely death is the secret of eternal youth.”

“I had lost some of my naivete and gained strength. These women with their pointless scheming could not contain me, and I watched the volatile world of the gynaeceum with a detached eye. The Forbidden City had buried my youth, and in the monastery, I had died and come back to life. Friends, enemies and mistresses had all disappeared. I was a ghost from a lost world, still going from one season to the next and still living for one man alone.”

“Out on the street I start to run; I need to breathe in this life, the trees, the warmth of my town. I will be able to control my own fate and I will know how to be happy. Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle . . .”