“Pain, too, comes from depths that cannot be revealed. We do not know whether those depths are in ourselves or elsewhere, in a graveyard, in a scarcely dug grave, only recently inhabited by withered flesh. This truth, which is banal enough, unravels time and the face, holds up a mirror to me in which I cannot see myself without being overcome by a profound sadness that undermines one's whole being. The mirror has become the route through which my body reaches that state, in which it is crushed into the ground, digs a temporary grave, and allows itself to be drawn by the living roots that swarm beneath the stones. It is flattened beneath the weight of that immense sadness which few people have the privilege of knowing. So I avoid mirrors.”

“Do you know what vengence is, Tim? It is a dark mirror in which we cannot see ourselves.”

“How are we to help? We need to become aware of all the ways in which we hold the child back from becoming a fully functioning human being: the sink and counter that she cannot reach, the mirror that is too high for her to see herself, the chair that is too big for her to sit comfortably in...the pants that are too tight for her to pull up and down...”

“Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviornment.”

“It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.”

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”