The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

A child's reaction to this type of calamity is twofold and extreme. Not knowing how deeply, powerfully, life drops anchor into its vast sources of recuperation, he is bound to envisage, at once, the very worst; yet at the same time, because of his inability to imagine death, the worst remains totally unreal to him. Gerard went on repeating: "Paul's dying; Paul's going to die"' but he did not believe it. Paul's death would be part of the dream, a dream of snow, of journeying forever.

After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.

I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.