Pascal Quignard

from Abysses:
Chapter 36

mercury is a hard metal, dense and elusive.

Only the real is harder and has more holes in it; is more truncated, more sexed, cutting, dying.

Writing is closer to the real than speaking.

Writing is denser material than mercury. I call up a face which each secret I divulge pushes further and further from me into the shadows, so true is it that all attempts to call out to people actually abandon them.