The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.

He was a man who had already died once.There was no reason why he should feel any sense of responsibility or attachment to the world. To him, it was nothing more than a sheet of newspaper covered in the scribblings of cockroaches.

…Her desire was close to that of the person who drowns himself; he does not necessarily covet death so much as what comes after the drowning—something different from what he had before, at least a different world.

What I wanted was to die among strangers, untroubled, beneath a cloudless sky. And yet my desire differed from the sentiments of that ancient Greek who wanted to die under the brilliant sun. What I wanted was some natural, spontaneous suicide. I wanted a death like that of a fox, not yet well versed in cunning, that walks carelessly along a mountain path and is shot by a hunter because of its own stupidity…