Those notebooks I memorized, and in the end they made me feel that the world of the Normale- the friends, male and female, who respected me, the affectionate looks of those professors who encouraged me to constantly do more- was part of a universe that was too protected and thus too predictable, compared with that tempestuous world that, in the conditions of life in the neighborhood, Lila had been able to explore in her hurried lines, on pages that were crumpled and stained.
