the winter anthology
Vol. 10
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.