Time passes and the pain begins to roll in and out as though it’s a woman standing at an ironing board, passing the iron back and forth, back and forth across a white tablecloth.

There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world.

It comes out so quietly that I have to ask her to repeat it: “It’s just that I thought maybe you were married to me.

I think play must have been invented so we wouldn't go mad thinking about certain things.

Every minute of his life since then has been marked by her absence, every action has lacked dimension because she is not there to measure against. And when I was young I didn't understand, but now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.

Sometimes I'm happy when he's gone, but I'm always happy when he returns. -Clare

CLARE: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble.