Return to me the substance I have lost, Mr. Foe. That is my entreaty. — J. M. Coetzee

But this is not a place of words. Each syllable, as it comes out, is caught and filled with water and diffused. This is a place where bodies have their own signs. It is the home of Friday.

Nothing I have forgotten is worth the remembering.

Would gladly now recount to you the history of this singular Cruso, as I heard it from his own lips. But the stories he told me were so various and so hard to reconcile one with another, that I was more and more driven to conclude age and isolation had taken their toll on his memory, he no longer knew for sure what truth, what fancy.