Era questa, la carne dell'orso:ed ora che sono passati molti anni, rimpiango di averne mangiata poca, poiché, di tutto quanto la vita mi ha dato di b… - Primo Levi

Nothing can be said: nothing sure, nothing probable, nothing honest. Better to err through omission than through commission: better to refrain from steering the fate of others, since it is already so difficult to navigate one's own.

The sea of grief has no shores, no bottom; no one can sound its depths.

Alongside the liberating relief of the veteran who tells us his story, I now felt in the writing a complex, intense, and new pleasure, similar to that I felt as a student when penetrating the solemn order of differentials calculus. It was exalting to search and find, or create, the right word, that is, commensurate, concise, and strong; to dredge up events from my memory and describe them with the greatest rigor and the least clutter.