“Once I saw the village butcher [in his youth, in Russia] slice the neck of a bird and drain the blood out of it. I wanted to cry out, but his joyful expression caught the sound in my throat... This cry, I always feel it there. When, as a I drew a crude portrait of my professor, I tried to rid myself of this cry, but in vain. When I painted the beef carcass it was still this cry that I wanted to liberate. I have still not succeeded.”

“I do not laugh; I do not cry;
I'm sweating out the will to die.

My past is sliding down the drain;
I soon will be myself again.”

“I give myself a good cry if I need it, but then I concentrate on all good things still in my life.”

“I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I'd cry for a week.”

“I could not cry for my own brother; he would not want me to. But I found myself crying for this hated stranger and the endless slaughter that I had almost contributed to." (page 8)”

“I want to see the thirst
inside the syllables
I want to touch the fire
in the sound:
I want to feel the darkness
of the cry. I want
words as rough
as virgin rocks.” - Verb.”

“I'm not used to sensitivity any more. When I see people cry when I lose, save your tears. I don't know how to handle people crying any more. I lost my sensitivity like that. Please, you embarrass me when you cry because I don't know what to do when you cry. I don't know what to say.”

“Remember that I’m still a monster. I can listen to you scream and cry and beg and I still won’t let you out.”

“I was crying a little for the boy I had wanted him to be and the boy he hadn’t turned out to be.”

“No, I don’t live in heartache. I don’t cry myself to sleep or any of that. I am, I tell myself, over it. But I do feel a void, icky as that sounds. And—like it or not—I still think about her every single day.”