The East Indian

but I will be my own shelter, my landing place. Like a snail, I will carry home on my back, find it where I happen to be, make it from what I bear inside me.

The dead, simply by passing into death, somehow become innocent of all charges; it is we, the living, who bear the burden of guilt. [Tony]

My impulse was to strangle it, as one does with wounded things.

I too had to understand that previous lives are no longer accessible. That they are, in fact, quite gone. That one can learn, must learn, to live anew.

I wondered: dies any man ever fully know any woman? He thinks he does--she is the girl living down the lane, the girl fetching water from the communal well, the girl who speaks in accents familiar, and suddenly one day, he finds out that she has been a stranger all along, a dreamer of dreams he never suspected, a poet of verses better than his, or a more effective physician, or a saint, ultimately unavailable to him or any man. [Tony]