She could speak, of course, but had little to say. No sooner do I succeed in persuading her to speak than she slips through my fingers.
*
I get the impression that her life was one long meditation about nothingness.
— Lispector, The Hour of the Star (tr. G. Pontiero)
Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one's ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.
– Kafka
Notes from a Room