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Updated December 12, 2000
Created August 15, 1997
1. 8 "She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. . . .far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day."
2. 9 "Did it matter then . . . that she must inevitable cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?"
3. 10 "But often now this body she wore . . . this body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing --- nothing at all."
4. 12 ". . . at any moment the brute would be stirring, this hatred, which, especially since her illness, had power to make her feel scraped, hurt in her spine; gave her physical pain, and made all pleasure in beauty, in friendship, in being well, in being loved . . . quiver, and bend as if indeed there were a monster grubbing at the roots . . ."
5. 13 ". . . how she loved the grey-whit moths spinning in and out, over the cherry pie, over the evening primroses!"
6. 29 ". . . moments like this are buds on the tree of life, flowers of darkness they
are. . . ."
7. 39 "So on a summer’s day waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole world seems to be saying "that is all" more and more ponderously, until even the heart in the body . . . says too, That is all."
8. 48 "(The leaden circles dissolved in the air.)"
9. 57 "Nothing exists outside us except a state of mind . . . a desire for solace, for relief, for something outside these miserable pigmies, these feeble, these ugly, these craven men and women."
10. 57 ". . . this figure, made of sky and branches as it is, had risen from the troubled sea . . . as a shape might be sucked up out of the waves to shower down from her magnificent hands compassion, comprehension, absolution."
11. 63 "They went in and out of each other’s minds without any effort."
12. 64 "Still, one got over things. Still, life had a way of adding day to day."
13. 69 "The word "time" split its husk; poured its riches over him; and from his lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without his making them, hard, white, imperishable words, and flew to attach themselves to their places in an ode to Time; an immortal ode to Time."
14. 88 ". . . it might be possible that the world itself is without meaning."
15. 89 "For the truth is . . . that human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment."
16. 112 "And they went further and further from her, being attached to her by a thin thread . . . which would stretch and stretch. . . as if one’s friends were attached to one’s body, after lunching with them, by a thin thread, which . . . is blotted with rain-drops, and, burdened, sags down."
17. 122 ". . . what did it mean to her, this thing she called life? Oh, it was very queer."
18. 122 "After that, how unbelievable death was! --- that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all . . . ."
19. 138 "Forgetfulness in people might wound, their ingratitude corrode, but this voice, pouring endlessly, year in year out, would take whatever it might be; this vow; this van; this life; this procession, would wrap them all about and carry them on, as in the rough stream of a glacier the ice holds a splinter of bone, a blue petal, some oak trees, and rolls them on."
20. 139 "Outside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of water was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birds singing."
21. 145 "A mouse had squeaked, or a curtain rustled. Those were the voices of the dead."
22. 152 "For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years."
23. 153 ". . . since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death . . . perhaps --- perhaps."
24. 161 "For this is the truth about our soul, . . . our self, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable . . . ."
25. 162 "She belonged to a different age, but being so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like a lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long voyage, this interminable --- this interminable life."
26. 174 "Lolloping on the waves and braiding her tresses she seemed, having that gift still; to be; to exist; to sum it all up in the moment as she passed . . . But age had brushed her; even as a mermaid might behold in her glass the setting sun on some very clear evening over the waves."
27. 184 "Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death."