Milczenie jest niekiedy równoznaczne z kłamstwem, ponieważ cisza może zostać odebrana jako ciche przyzwolenie.

"Sharp nostalgia, infinite and terrible, for what I already possess"
-Juan Ramón Jiménez-

So it is written--but so, too it is crossed out. You can write over it again. You can make notes in the margins. You can cut out the whole page. You can, and you must, edit and rewrite and reshape and pull out the wrong parts like bones and find just the thing and you can forever, forever, write more and more and more, thicker and longer and clearer. Living is a paragraph, constantly rewritten. It is Grown-Up Magic. Children are heartless; their parents hold them still, squirming and shouting, until a heart can get going in their little lawless wilderness. Teenagers crash their hearts into every hard and thrilling thing to see what will give and what will hold. And Grown-Ups, when they are very good, when they are very lucky, and very brave, and their wishes are sharp as scissors, when they are in the fullness of their strength, use their hearts to start their story over again.

Shall I tell her? Shall I be a kind and merciful narrator and take our girl aside? Shall I touch her new, red heart and make her understand that she is no longer one of the tribe of heartless children, nor even the owner of the wild and infant heart of thirteen-year-old girls and boys? Oh, September! Hearts, once you have them locked up in your chest, are a fantastic heap of tender and terrible wonders--but they must be trained. A heart can learn ever so many tricks, and what sort of beast it becomes depends greatly upon whether it has been taught to sit up or to lie down, to speak or to beg, to roll over or to sound alarms, to guard or to attack, to find or to stay. But the trick most folk are so awfully fond of learning, the absolute second they've got hold of a heart, is to pretend they don't have one at all. It is the very first danger of the hearted. Shall I give fair warning, as neither you nor I was given?

By now, my dear friends, you know me better.

'The only thing that gives life any meaning is the hope that when you die you'll go to a better place, and when they close that door to you and the only one that's left open is the door to Hell, then it's better not to have been born. For me, Juan Preciado, Heaven is right here where I am.'

'And your soul? Where do you think it's gone?'

'It must be wandering around up there on earth, like all those others, looking for people to pray for it. I think it hates me for the bad things I did, but that doesn't worry me any more. I'm rid of all the pain it used to give me. It made me feel bitter about everything, even about not getting enough to eat, and it made the nights unbearable, full of terrifying thoughts. Visions of the damned and things like that. When I sat down to die, it told me to get up again and keep on living, as if it still hoped for some miracle that would clean away my sins. But I wouldn't. "This is the end," I told it. "I can't go any farther.' I opened my mouth so it could leave, and it left. I felt something fall into my hands. It was the little thread of blood that tied to my heart.'