I have clandestine conversations with supposedly nonexistent personages.
-- Alicia (chapter 1)

Importance: This is the first reference to the “horts” who visit Alicia. The language here is telling: she insists that these visitors possess substantive reality, as revealed by qualifying them as “supposedly nonexistent” (8). Alicia also uses a number of different terms to describe them throughout the text, including “peronsages,” “horts,” “eidolons” and “chimeras,” but never hallucinations (8, 17, 22, 30). Alicia appreciates that others cannot see these figures, but that has no bearing on her sense of their reality. Her insistence on their reality at the early stage in the book helps define the stakes of her conversations with Dr. Cohen, and offers the first definitive example of the way reality, to Alicia, cannot be derived from consensus.

If I had a child I would just go in at night and sit there. Quietly. I would listen to my child breathing. If I had a child I...
-- Alicia (chapter 1)