The words emerge from her body without her realizing it, as if she were being visited by the memory of a language long forsaken.

Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn't comfort man. On the contrary, it encourages him in his folly, it transports him to the supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny.

Their voices reach out into the empty yard, plunge deep into the hills, go right through the heart.

I acquired that drinker's face before I drank. Drink only confirmed it. The space for it existed in me.

Even so you have managed to live that love in the only way possible for you. Losing it before it happened.

Very early in my life it was too late.

The outrage was on the scale of God. My younger brother was immortal and they hadn't noticed. Immortality had been concealed in my brother's body while he was alive, and we hadn't noticed that it dwelt there. Now my brother's body was dead, and immortality with it. ... And the error, the outrage, filled the whole universe.