"This story is really about the nameless, about speechless moments of terror. It is about moments when the mind boggles with horror, states of fear so brief that speech always comes too late; about dream happenings so gruesome that the mind perceives them physically as worms...These are precisely the moments I have already mentioned, in which extreme need to communicate coincides with extreme speechlessness." 34

"Cheated out of your own biography and feelings, you became "skittish"; you shied away from people, stopped talking, or, more seriously touched, went from house to house screaming. The above-mentioned rites then functioned as a consolation. This consolation didn't address itself to you as a person; it simply swallowed you up, so that in the end you as an individual were content to be nothing, or at least nothing much. You lost interest in personal matters and stopped inquiring about them. All questions became empty phrases, and the answers became so stereotyped that there was no need to involve people in them; objects sufficed; the cool grave, the sweet heart of Jesus, the sweet Lady of Sorrows, became fetishes for the death wish that sweetened your daily afflictions; in the midst of these consoling fetishes, you ceased to exist." 37

"They seldom looked at each other except in these moments of hatred; then they looked deep and unflinchingly in each other's eyes." 41

"I sleep late, and when I finally crawl out of bed, I have no desire to do anything...Whenever a pleasant thought crops up, a door closes and I'm alone again with my nightmares. I'd be so glad to write something more cheerful, but there isn't anything..I have to force myself to do something, or I'd just go back to bed. There's a terrible loneliness inside me, I don't feel like talking to anyone." 62-3

"I don't want to pull myself together anymore." 66

"A thought is taking shape, then suddenly it notices that there is nothing more to think." 75

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, Peter Handke, 1972, tr Ralph Manheim 1974 FSG
NYRB 2002 1590170199
read at register, not purchased