Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.
He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach – that it makes no sense.
You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn’t annihilate human nature.
Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up.
Because that is when you love somebody – when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.
The pleasure isn’t in owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you.
Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing.
You tasted it. Isn’t that enough? Of what do you ever get more than a taste? That’s all we’re given in life, that’s all we’re given of life. A taste. There is no more.
Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them–at least I didn’t; to phrase them was to invent them and own them.
Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that — well, lucky you.
