Eliza," said George, "people that have friends, and houses, and lands, and money, and all those things, can't love as we do, who have nothing but each other. ... And your loving me,—why, it was almost like raising one from the dead! I've been a new man ever since! And now, Eliza, I'll give my last drop of blood, but they shall not take you from me. Whoever gets you must walk over my dead body.
The hope is that here, as in other respects, the reader is invited into a critical and collaborative venture, seeing what Dante sees and constructing along with him (as he himself asks his reader to do, for instance, in Paradiso 13: 1–18) the relationships that define us humans in our own participation in existence.
С твоя здрав разум си тъйискрено сляпа за безразсъдствата и глупостите на другите! Всекиможе да се преструва на искрен — това го виждаме навсякъде. Но даси искрен без показност и без преструвка — да извличаш самодоброто от всекиго и да го правиш още по-добро, без изобщо даспоменаваш несъвършенствата, — това го можеш само ти.
Most people are heartless about turtles because a turtle’s heart will beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too and my feet and hands are like theirs. He ate the white eggs to give himself strength. He ate them all through May to be strong inSeptember and October for the truly big fish.
I lie flat, the damp air above me like a lid. Like earth. I wish it would rain. Better still, a thunderstorm, black clouds, lightning, car-splitting sound. The electricity might go off. I could go down to the kitchen then, say I'm afraid, sit with Rita and Cora around the kitchen table, they would permit my fear because it's one they share, they'd let me in. There would be candles burning, we would watch each other's faces come and go in the flickering, in the white flashes of jagged light from outside the windows. Oh Lord, Cora would say. Oh Lord save us.The air would be clear after that, and lighter.I look up at the ceiling, the round circle of plaster flowers. Draw a circle, step into it, it will protect you. From the center was the chandelier, and from the chandelier a twisted strip of sheet was hanging down. That's where she was swinging, just lightly, like a pendulum; the way you could swing as a child, hanging by your hands from a tree branch. She was safe then, protected altogether, by the time Cora opened the door. Sometimes I think she's still in here, with me.I feel buried.