P.5 it’s above all primary life that breathes, breathes, breathes.

P.5 Because there’s the right to scream.
So I scream.

P.7 Who hasn’t ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?

P.7 If she was dumb enough to ask herself “who am I?” she would fall flat on her face. … Those who wonder are incomplete.

P.24 Only once did she ask a tragic question: who am I? It frightened her so much that she completely stopped thinking.

P.25 But she lived in such sameness that at night she couldn’t remember what happened that morning. She vaguely thought from far off and without words this: since I am, the thing to do is to be.

P.42 She wasn’t crying because of the life she led: because, never having led any other, she’d accepted that with her that was just the way things were. But I also think she was crying because, through the music, she might have guessed there were other ways of feeling, there were more delicate existences and even a certain luxury of soul. She knew that there were a lot of things she didn’t know how to understand. Did “aristocracy” mean an answered prayer? Probably.

P.51 It’s better for me not to speak of happiness or unhappiness — it provokes that swooning longing and lilac,

P.69 When she was little, since she didn’t have anyone to kiss, she’d kissed the wall. When she caressed someone else she was caressing herself.

P.71 and saw among the stones lining the gutter the wisps of grass green as the most tender human hope. Today, she thought, today is the first day of my life:

P.73 A symbol that can be summed up in a deep kiss but not on a rough wall but mouth-to-mouth

P.74 I am, I am, I am.

P.76 you accept anything because you’ve kissed the wall.