“(M)uch as we might imagine we can leave the past behind, it has a nasty way of pressing its hoary old face against the window just as we were sitting down to the feast.”

“We long for a life we never had but of which we seem to have a clear memory; a life in wich there is no longing.”

“Self-inflicted pain has a calming effect; it clears the head, diminishes one's fascination with the ego, and most important, gives one the sense of having taken some real action against the everyday foolishness of the body and of the vagrant, willful, heedless imagination.”

“And it seemed to me that longing was everything, longing is all we are.”

“The natural beauty of the earth made hard for me to consider the pathetic struggle of humans on the face of it. The great release of death, I thought, was not from the bondage to our lovely planet- who could ever wish to leave this extraordinary place?- but from one another.”

“Everyone else felt the need to assure me that Mother's death was part of God's plan. Exactly, I wanted to shout after reading this sentiment half a dozen times--- his plan is to kill us all, and if an innocent child dies in agony and a wicked man breathes his last at an advanced age in his sleep, who are we to call it injustice?”

“(A) trip to the attic is an excursion into history, and...all over the world the present unravels beneath the stored detritus of the past; that's what attics are for.”