My own funeral, I'd like to be laid out in a coffin in my own house. I would like my coffin to be put in the double parlor, and I would like all the flowers to be white.

But the sky was never quite the same shade of blue again.

Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets - as vast and indestructible as nature itself.

I think that we are supernatural. We are unique. We're the only animals in the universe that we know of that actually have self-consciousness, a sense of time and our own mortality.

My life's been too much of a self-created vocation. And there are times when I think I've done everything in the name of defiance.

Then, are you master of us all? You didn't teach her that. Was she supposed to imbibe it from my quiet subservience?

I assume I don't need an introduction.