Everyday brought me further away from other people, I had been placed out of the world's sight, as if in a cupboard, and I hoped it would stay that way. I developed a yearning for being alone, unkempt, untended.

Writing itself does not know what it looks like while one is doing it, only when it's finished.

In this county, we had to walk, eat, sleep and love in fear.

Language is so different from life. How am I supposed to fit the one into the other? How can I bring them together?

I wanted to get out of our thimble of a town, where every stone had eyes.

Only the demented would not have raised their hands in the great hall. They had exchanged fear for insanity".

If you live with death threats, you need friends. So you have to risk that they might spy on you.