The problem, the only problem, is my mother. And she is the one of course that I am trying to get; it is to reach her that this whole journey has been undertaken. With what purpose? To mark her off, t...
Something happened here. In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, were something happened, and then there are all the other places
It almost seemed as if there must be some random and of course unfair thrift in the emotional housekeeping of the world, if the great happiness -- however temporary, however flimsy -- of one person co...
Isn't it true that all the people I know in the world so far are hardly more than puppets for me, serving the glossy contrivings of my imagination?
I would have seen flaws in this, later in my life. I would have felt the impatience, even suspicion, a woman can feel towards a man who lacks a motive. Who has only friendship to offer and offers that...
He said that we had just had an argument, what more did I want?It was too polite, I said.
Everybody said to me back home, what do you want to go to Alaska for, and I said, because I've never been there, isn't that a good enough reason?
But when she was finished running away, when she just went on, what would she put in his place?
You think that would have changed things?The answer is of course, and for a while, and never.
This was the great difference between disappointing him and disappointing somebody like my mother, or even my aunts. Masculine self-centeredness made him restful to be with.
Something that could not easily bu put into words and indeed might never be.
Se suponía que saltar del tren era una cancelación. Levantar el cuerpo, preparar las rodillas para entrar en un bloque de aire distinto. Se va en busca de vacío, y en cambio ¿qué encuentra? La inmedia...
People’s lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, and unfathomable – deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum.
Ora non credo piú che la gente abbia segreti precisi e comunicabili, né sentimenti esuberanti e facili da riconoscere. Non ci credo piú.
Love removes the world for you, and just as surely when it's going well as when it's going badly.
I was thinking about changing into a different sort of person than the one I am. I do think about that. I read a book called The Art of Loving. A lot of things seemed clear while I was reading it but...
His face contained for me all possibilities of fierceness and sweetness, pride and submissiveness, violence, self-containment. I never saw more in it than I had when I saw it first, because I saw ever...
Sick people grew to resent well people, and sometimes that was true of husbands and wives, or even of mothers and their children. Both
Now I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize.
I saw how the forms of love might be maintained with a condemned person but with the love in fact measured and disciplined, because you have to survive. It could be done so discreetly that the object...