“A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.”

“I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.”

“We should do nothing for revenge, but everything for security: nothing for the past; everything for the present and the future.”

“Nothing, nothing felt better than the way sand felt beneath my feet. It was both solid and shifting. Constant and ever-changing. It was summer.”

“...But if a mirror ever makes you sadyou should knowthat it does not knowyou.”

“Nobody in my life has ever known me the way you do. Nobody in my life has ever made me feel as good as you do. You know me, you know everything about me, and when you leave me, you're going to be leaving the real me, the me nobody else has ever seen, that's who you're going to be rejecting.”