and the two of them loved each other for a long time in silence without making love again.

The world was reduced to the surface of her skin and her inner self was safe from all bitterness.

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.

In that way the long-awaited visit, for which both had prepared questions and had even anticipated answers, was once more the usual everyday conversation.

Everything that belonged to her husband made her weep again: his tasseled slippers, his pajamas under the pillow, the space of his absence in the dressing table mirror, his own odor on her skin. A vague thought made her shudder: "The people one loves should take all their things with them when they die.

I don't have a method. All I do is read a lot, think a lot, and rewrite constantly. It's not a scientific thing.

Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.