Blondesense and Nonsense

"I never had any questions except one about the moment when I could die. I should have chose the moment before the arrival of my children, for since then I've lost the option of dying. The sharp smell of the sun-baked hair, the smell of sweat on their backs when they wake from a nightmare, the dusty smell of their hands when they leave the classrom, meant that I had to live, to be dazzled by the shadow of their eyelashes, moved by a snowflake, bowled over by a tear on their cheek. My children have given me the exclusive power to blow on a wound to make the pain dissappear, to understand words unpronounced, to possess the unversial truth." - Ru, a novel by Kim Thuy