Hence the paradox at the heart of the book: the prophecy would remain true only if he did not speak it. But then, of course, there would be no prophecy, and Jonah would no longer be a prophet.

The moment of illumination that burns across the sky of solitude.

Will you hear me? Do you know how much I love you? I could never tell you how much I love you. I cannot tell you even now. I speak to you, only to you. You are with me always, and I who was such a wild and angry one and never learned to weep simple tears—now I weep and weep and weep

Then he writes. It was. It will never be again.

Is it true that one must dive to the depths of the sea and save one’s father to become a real boy?

Memory, then, not so much as the past contained within us, but as proof of our life in the present.

If there is to be any justice at all, it must be a justice for everyone. No one can be excluded, or else there is no such thing as justice.

In my solitude you haunt me / With reveries of days gone by. / In my solitude you taunt me / With memories that never die

Written language absolves one of the need to remember much of the world, for the memories are stored in the words.