I wanted to be missed, like water, like bread, like air, by all other people in all other places. - Jean-Paul Sartre

It looked like a colour, but also... like a bruise or a secretion, like an oozing-and something else, an odour, for example, it melted into the odour of wet earth, warm, moist wood, into a black odour that spread like varnish over this sensitive wood, in a flavour of chewed, sweet fibre. I did not simply see this black: sight is an abstract invention, a simplified idea, one of man's ideas. That black, amorphous, weakly presence, far surpassed sight, smell and taste. But this richness was lost in confusion and finally was no more because it was too much.

از همه اندوهگین تر کسی است که از همه بیشتر می خندد

I lean all my weight on the porcelain ledge, I draw my face closer until it touches the mirror. The eyes, nose, and mouth disappear. Nothing is left. Brown wrinkles show on each side of the feverish swelled lips, crevices, mole holes. A silky, white down covers the great slopes of the cheeks, two hairs protrude from the nostrils: it is a geological embossed map. And, in spite of everything, this lunar world is familiar to me. I cannot say I recognize the details. But the whole thing gives me an impression of something seen before which stupefies me: I slip quietly off to sleep.