"I don't know. The oddest things. But it's not fear, not real fear…it's a bit different… fear comes from outside, I've understood this, there you are and fear comes over you, there's you and there's fear… that's how it is…there's fear and me too, but what happens to me is that suddenly I'm not there anymore, there's only the fear…which isn't really fear, though… I don't know what it is, do you know?"


"It's a bit like feeling you're dying. Or disappearing. That's it: disappearing. It seems as if your eyes are slipping away from your face, and your hands are becoming another's hands, and then you think what's happening to me?, and in the meantime your heart is beating inside you so hard you're dying for it to stop, it won't leave you in peace… and all over you feel as if parts of you were going away, you can't feel them anymore…
you're on the point of going, and then I tell myself, think about something, you must hang on to a thought, if I can shrink into that thought then it will all pass, all you must do is resist, but the fact is that…and this is the really horrible thing…the fact is that there are no thoughts anymore, nowhere inside you, there is no thought anymore but only feelings, do you see? Feelings…and the strongest of those is an infernal fever,and an intolerable stink, a taste of death here in the throat,a fever, and a bite, something that bites, a demon that is biting you and tearing you to pieces, a ... "


-Alessandro Baricco