Birth, not death, is the hard loss.

Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary, imperial joy and sorrow of human existence, the dreamed as well as the lived— what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?

From the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved.

The soul is silent. If it speaks at all it speaks in dreams.

He takes her in his arms He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you But he thinks this is a lie, so he says in the end You're dead, nothing can hurt you which seems to him a more promising beginning, more true.

17. The self ended and the world began. They were of equal size, commensurate, one mirrored the other. 18. The riddle was: why couldn't we live in the mind. The answer was: the barrier of the earth intervened.

I think I can remember being dead. Many times, in winter, I approached Zeus. Tell me, I would ask him, how can I endure the earth?