“Humans are so strange. Now I have seen you. It is odd. You do not look any different. Yet I know you must be. Dying changes a person.” DeathChangeDyingStrange Book:Black Wine Source: Black Wine
“He had slowed the melody now to a sad, reflective circle of notes. Behind this basic structure, Elta was piling an increasing weight of harmonies, circling again and again to augment them. He thought it was like the weight of the past, the weight of memory, building and building until it seemed almost unbearable, and yet there was always room for more: another repetition, another variation. The clapping had long since died away and the audience was rapt and silent. Suddenly a clutch of despair squeezed his heart. How would he survive the rest of his long life? He was not yet very old, and yet he felt old. Like the Essa with the gray-streaked hair who had been carried raving off the ship at Avanue, and whose limp and pallid shape he’d tended unconscious until the day she woke to say ‘Minh’ to him in the same rich voice he remembered. “I feel so old, she had said to him once. How will I live the rest of my life? Then, he hadn’t really known what she meant, though he had understood. Now, he both understood and knew.” LifeAgePainDeathSadnessSorrowDespair Book:Black Wine Source: Black Wine
“It is only for a while. I will receive you when you die, with special love.’ “‘That won’t do me any good.’ Essa struggles through sobs, finds speech, bends it until she can keep hold of it. ‘It won’t be a little while for me. It’ll be my life. And when you receive me, I’ll be dead.” LoveLifeDeathLossSeparation Book:Black Wine Source: Black Wine