What can't be said can be written. Because writing is a silent act, a labor from the head to the hand.

I'm always telling myself I don't have many feelings. Even when something does affect me I'm only moderately moved. I almost never cry. It's not that I'm stronger than the ones with teary eyes, I'm weaker. They have courage. When all you are is skin and bones, feelings are a brave thing. I'm more of a coward. The difference is minimal though, I just use my strength not to cry. When I do allow myself a feeling, I take the part that hurts and bandage it up with a story that doesn't cry, that doesn't dwell on homesickness.

What can be said about chronic hunger. Perhaps that there's a hunger that can make you sick with hunger. That it comes in addition to the hunger you already feel. That there is a hunger which is always new, which grows insatiably, which pounces on the never-ending old hunger that already took such effort to tame. How can you face the world if all you can say about yourself is that you're hungry.

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

Anything in literature, including memory, is second-hand.

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

In Romanian society, I am not particularly well-liked. I don't often receive invitations.