A. S. Byatt

I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm. An ankle overlapping an ankle, as they sat on a beach, and not removed. One night they fell asleep, side by side... He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

My Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have. I hesitate to go out. If you opened the little gate, I would not hop away—but oh how I sing in my gold cage.

Only write to me, write to me, I love to see the hop and skip and sudden starts of your ink.

There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.

I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.