Mental acuity was never born from comfortable circumstances.

Her pupils have taken on a lonely hue, like grey clouds reflected in a calm lake.

No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.

I realize now that the reality of things is not something you convey to people but something you make.

I'm a writer. I don't support any war. That's my principle.

How can the mind be so imperfect?" she says with a smile. I look at my hands. Bathed in the moonlight, they seem like statues, proportioned to no purpose. "It may well be imperfect," I say, "but it leaves traces. And we can follow those traces, like footsteps in the snow." "Where do the lead?" "To oneself," I answer. "That's where the mind is. Without the mind, nothing leads anywhere." I look up. The winter moon is brilliant, over the Town, above the Wall. "Not one thing is your fault," I comfort her.

He appeared before me and departed. We were not able to speak to or touch each other. But in that short interval, he transformed many things inside me. He literally stirred my mind and body the way a spoon stirs a cup of cocoa, down to the depths of my internal organs and my womb.