If the first sentence were only the birth of the next one, setting it down on paper would not be so difficult. The reason for my avoidance is rather that it shuts the door to a number of other sentences, a moment earlier still possible. Possible, yet not known to me, and so, equally impossible. And yet, that first sentence -- each sentence, since each is first -- is the death of a next one. The first sentence reduces me to silence: whether or not I write it.