It was a mute and merciless war, the significance I couldn’t grasp, and which troubled me not because of the damage they might inflict, but because I sensed something dark in it which made me shudder. page 79
What an alien race adults were, how strange were men and women. And how alien and absurd were we. What strangers to the world, to the passing of time. We were no longer children. But neither, suddenly, could we say what we were. page 81
I found in Jorge’s tiredness something like a return to a place I couldn’t even name. To see him, [……] taking refuge in memories and dark roses, made me want to touch, drink in his memories, swallow down his sadness (`thank you, thank you for your sadness’), take refuge in it so I could escape as he had done, submerge myself forever in that great glass of pink wine, to be filled up magically with his nostalgia. page 142