Let us go on as if I were the only one in the world (whereas I'm the only one absent from it).

"I should have liked to go silent first. There were moments I thought that would be my reward for having spoken so long and so valiantly: to enter living into silence. So as to be able to enjoy it? No, I don't know why. So as to feel myself silent? One with all this quiet air shattered unceasingly by my voice alone? (No, it's not real air.) I can't say it. I can't say why I should have liked to be silent a little before being dead. So as in the end to be a little as I always was and never could be? Without fear of worse to come peacefully in the place where I always was and could never rest in peace? No, I don't know. It's simpler than that. I wanted myself, in my own land for a brief space. I didn't want to die a stranger in the midst of strangers (a stranger in my own midst), surrounded by invaders."