If there is any difficulty in what I write, it is because of the material I use. The thought is always simple.

Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.

if it is thus, I ask emphatically whence comes this thusness.

It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.

What did that mean, to kiss? You put your face up like that to say goodnight and then his mother put her face down. That was to kiss. His mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise: kiss. Why did people do that with their two faces?

He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible.

Absence, the highest form of presence.