The police force has become vigilant. It monitors our every move. Its representative is Commandant Calédu, a ferocious black man who has been terrori… - Marie Vieux-Chauvet

Nothing would stop her from doing something, even if it killed her. Doing something for absolutely no reason, perhaps, but still doing something, such is what life demands from human beings. Faint whiffs of hope would stir up illusions she had thought quite dead. So this is what helps, she told herself as she walked. So this is why suicide cannot be the normal culmination of a human life. I am going to try to do something. I'm going to try to believe that I can still make myself useful. She looked at the sky, the trees, the flowers, the people, as if she were seeing them for the first time. She opened her handbag and put money in the hands of beggars; confronted with a skeletal mother and her four starving, crying babies, she took stock of her own sufferings and found them acceptable. (chapter 12)

The stars multiply, separate, and scatter. Everything comes to an end and then starts again. (p67)

In every human being there is a blessed soul made miserable by the pursuit of happiness. (p69)