Grief is a gift, something you have to earn.

She was transparent, like a watercolor. As if she were about to dissolve in sound, in tones not yet created.

The body's pain is so paper-thin and insignificant compared to that of the mind.

We think there are limits to the dimensions of fear. Until we encounter the unknown. Then we can all feel boundless amounts of terror.

Maybe it's wrong when we remember breakthroughs to our own being as something that occurs in discrete, extraordinary moments. Maybe falling in love, the piercing knowledge that we ourselves will someday die, and the love of snow are in reality not some sudden events; maybe they were always present. Maybe they never completely vanish, either.

There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language.

Those who were on the inside, the majority that is, for them it had been hard to get his point, mostly they were just pleased that they were on the inside, that they were the fittest. For those on the outside, the fear and abandonment amounts to almost everything; everybody knows that. Understanding is something one does best when one is on the borderline.