“You could tell perfectly that she was alive from the constant blinking of her big eyes, from the thin chest that was rising and falling in perhaps difficult breathing. But who can tell if she wasn’t needing to die? Because there are times when a person needs a little bitty death and doesn’t even know it. As for me, I substitute the act of death for a symbol of it. A symbol that can be summed up in a deep kiss but not on a rough wall but mouth-to-mouth in the agony of pleasure that is death. I, who symbolically die several times just to experience the resurrection.”
Note used in the 470th paragraph of The Hour of the Star. The handwriting is by Clarice.