P.72 This wonder of technology radiated such overwhelming optimism that for all who came to admire it, death must have seemed an archaic part of the old order, a primordial failing from which humankind would escape as soon as it achieved its desire for modernity and a permanent trust in technology. Whatever was coming was bound to be good, because it would yield to the control of sterilized, shining instruments, appliances and utensils. These would be reparable, and this virtully immortal.

P.110 For a split second Mieczysław notices an incredible phenomenon — the light of magnesium bounces off the spruce trees and firs and returns to them, briefly coating their bodies in ash; it is as if in this split second he has glimpsed beneath the jackets and pullovers not just their bare white skin, but also their bones, the shape of their skeletons; it feels as if they are standing on a stage, as if this is the overture to an opera, and the spectators in this theatre are the trees, blueberry bushes, moss-coated stones and some fluid, ill-defined presence that is moving like streams of warmer air among the mighty trunks, boughs and branches.

P.131 He had noticed that when one participates intensively in life, one has no time for thinking or examining everything precisely, if only in one’s imagination.

P.132 — they are wisps of sensations carried by time like gossamer, moved by the wind, trails if tiny reactions that arrange themselves into random sequences eager for meaning. But their nature is volatile and impermanent, they appear and disappear, leaving behind an impression that something really did happen and that we took part in it. And that what we are stuck inside is stable and certain. That it exists.

P.134 The horrible sight of the dark-red, almost brown blood congealing on the stump forced him into painful ambivalence — to feel afraid, while also feeling a strange, indescribable fascination close to pleasure, far mightier than picking scabs off his knees, or teasing an already wobbly milk tooth. His chest was racked by sorrow that could not change into weeping or relief of any kind, but just went on pushing from the inside, paralysing his lungs.

P.185 Why was our Mieczysław so afraid of them? Did he fear that they would peel away his carefully constructed image of a person who is on good terms with himself, who feels all right about himself and is sure of fits own opinions? That they would take him back to Lwów, to face all those prosecutors — at school, in the street, in doctors’ consulting rooms, in his own home? All those physicians who tsk-tsked over him with such concern? That they would drag him into those low, hot kitchens where szernia was constantly being made? Into the cellars where toads sat on poles of potatoes sprouting in the darkness, and his uncle’ss boys could be seen through the windows — rapping away, one, two, at a marching step, while his hand squeezed little Mieczyś’s shoulder?
He preferred to belong to this world, which did not yet know him and in whose eyes he still has time to define himself. He would rather take the risk that one day this world too would disappoint him, and he would have to run away again, escape to yet another, more distant location to avoid falling into the arms of that familiar, hopeless state in which one was simply a bother to oneself and others. By this point he has just about adopted the idea that his illness had come upon him at a very good moment in his young life, giving him a chance to reformulate himself, and that he should actually be happy to have ended up here, in this little Silesian health resort, built on the waters of an underground lake.

P.296 ‘This protects us from reality, which is built up of a multitude of very subtle shades. If anyone thinks the world is a set of stark opposites, he is sick. … This vision maintains in us a peculiar irresolution, and does not let any dogma take shape. You treat us to a land “in-between”, which we’d rather not think about, having quite enough of our own black-and-white problems. You show us that it is greater than we thought, and that it affects us too. … I think you’ll be home for Christmas.’

P.309 Here we are, slightly changed, but just the same as before, warm but also cold, both seeing and blind.

P.311 Our eyes penetrate deep inside. We can see the skeleton, the beating heart, the peristalsis of the intestines, the oesophagus working away as it endeavours to push down the saliva that has gathered out of fear. We can see the tongue, arranging itself to utter some word. The diaphragm rises and falls, drops of urine flow from the kidneys to the bladder. The uterus clenches like a fist, but the member swells with blood.