“If I was going to fall, I would hang on to my small comforts, at least, for as long as I possibly could.”

“I don’t want to go (...) Maybe if you had already graduated, you could go with me. It would be a possibility. But, as long as you are here, that’s where I am going to be”

“I wonder what I would find if I could go back and decipher the layers, if it were possible to delve into my past that way, but realize that, even if it were possible, it would be futile.”

“But I believed in starting over. There was finally, I knew, only rupture and hurt and falling short between all persons, but, Shirley, the best revenge was to turn your life into a small gathering of miracles.If I could not be anchored and profound, I would try, at least, to be kind.”

“It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther.”

“I put my office right in the middle of the death they threaten us with. [...] here I sit, every day, hanging over all this wasted nothing. I will never forget what the world could be, should my vigilance never fail. And more than that, I will never forget that in a way we are all hanged men and hanged women, awaiting those deaths which cannot be avoided. Yet I will make sure that we live and die the way we choose for as long as we possibly can.”