“I had to go through with it, and I turned around and she was nude except for hose and shoes, and then I saw the wounds. It was at the loins; it was a birthmark or something, a burn, a seared place, a pitiful, dry, vacant place where flesh was gone, where the thighs suddenly became small and shriveled and the flesh seemed dead. I closed my jaws and then I said, "What--that? Is that all, just that? It's nothing, a mere trifle."”

— John Fante , book Ask the Dust

But I was losing the words, I had to say them quickly or they would never form.
Ask the Dust (1939)

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John Fante 113

1909–1983; American novelist, short story writer and screen… 1909–1983

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As quoted in The New York Post (26 April 1959)

“I saw my Lord with the eye of my heart.
He said, "Who are you?" I said, "I am You."
You are He Who fills all place
But place does not know where You are.
In my subsistence is my annihilation;
In my annihilation, I remain You.”

Mansur Al-Hallaj (858–922) Persian mystic, revolutionary writer and teacher of Sufism

Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (1978) by Steven T. Katz, p. 92; four centuries later the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart would make a very similar assertion: "The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love."
Variant translations:
I saw my Lord with the eye of the heart. I asked: Who art Thou? <br/> He answered: Thou.
As quoted in Sufism : The Mystical Doctrines and Methods of Islam (1976) by William Stoddart , p. 83
I saw my Lord with the eye of the heart
And said: "Who are you?" He answered: "You!
As quoted in In the Company of Friends : Dreamwork Within a Sufi Group (1994) by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, p. 86
I saw my Lord with the eye of the heart, and I said "Who are you?" and he said "Your Self."
As quoted in The Modern Alchemist : A Guide to Personal Transformation (1994) by Iona Miller, p. 119
I saw my Lord with the Eye of my heart,<br/> And I said: Truly there is no doubt that it is You.<br/> It is You that I see in everything;<br/> And I do not see You through anything (but You).
As quoted in "Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj" at Sidi Muhammad Press http://www.sufimaster.org/teachings/husayn.htm