The History of Love - Pg 45

Alberto Giacometti said that sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky. 

My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father, and to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world.