Adam seemed to be alone in this ability to die whenever he wanted, a private hidden death; the only living creature in the world who was passing insensibly, his flesh not decaying and putrefying, but freezing into a mineral. - Le Clezio, from The Interrogation
At the conclusion of a life full of concentrated memories it was a kind of pale phantom in ghostly outline, like a dingy patch of snow; it was leaking away over the brown floor, evasive and persistent. It was a lobular cloud, or a fleck of soft foam, dissociated from blood and terror, sailing on the surface of dirty water. It was what remains from an instant of linen-washing, what floats, what turns blue, what traverses the thick of the air and bursts before ever it can be polluted, before ever it can be killed. - Le Clezio, from The Interrogation
