Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the blind shadow cast by its absence.

More from The Blind Assassin

• Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring.
• Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.
• You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn't necessarily get you the truth... The living bird is not its labeled bones.
• All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always approximate.
• If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.
• The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not "Am I really that oppressed?" but "Am I really that boring?"