Alone dwells every man and everyone mocks everyone else, and a deserte — Albert Cohen

"My true single consolation is that she is not present to see me in my agony of her death."

"Go away, image of my living mother, full of life, as I saw her in France for the last time. Go away! My mothers ghost."

"I say to myself that her small hands are no more worm, and that I would never again carry them soft to my front."

"In my solitude I sing to myself a sweet lullaby, as sweet as my mother used to sing to me."

"Never again I would know her slow kisses which are hardly felt. Never again the ringing mourning bells, songs of the dead that we loved."

"Human friends, friends in hardship and in life, this is our pure love, love of mother and son."