“There was no pain when I awoke,
No pain at all. Rest, like a goad,
Spurred my eyes open — and light broke
Upon them like a million swords:
And she was there. There are no words. Heaven is for a moment's span.
And ever.”

“When she opened her eyes, Veronika did not think "this must be heaven". Heaven would never use a fluorescent tube to light a room, and the pain — which started a fraction of a second later — was typical of the Earth. Ah, that Earth pain — unique, unmistakable.”

“Turn away. From the darkness, the madness, the pain. Open your eyes and look at the light.”

“This in my heart I keep for goad!
Somewhere, in Heaven she walks that road.
Somewhere… in Heaven… she walks… that… road…”

“She is like all the rest of them. Whether they are seventeen or fortyseven, when they finally come to surrender completely, it's going to be in words.”

“It was the first time I'd ever said the words to another person, and the sound of them broke open my heart.”

“She had changed him. The ice was in his eyes and in his heart, like he had predicted with that song, but now they were deep embedded there, all the pain of the world. Not pain to make you feel for somebody else but pain to make you stop feeling.”

“Like the tender fires of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illuminated his memory.”

“Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny thing is I'm thankful for it. It's like that frozen pain and my very existence are one.
The pain is an anchor, mooring me”

“Later Buddy told me the woman was on a drug that would make her forget she'd had any pain and that when she swore and groaned she really didn't know what she was doing because she was in a kind of twilight sleep. I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn't groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again.”