A truck shot past in a whine of spray.
A month or two before, I would have been appalled at the idea of any murder at all. But that Sunday afternoon, as I actually stood watching one, it seemed the easiest thing in the world.
A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to...
The thought of returning to any kind of normal routine seemed disloyal, wrong. It kept being a shock every time I remembered it, a fresh slap: she was gone. Every new event-everything I did for the re...
No matter how hard I tried to wish him out of the picture—for there he always was, in my hands and my voice and my walk...
My head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky.
It's so heartbreaking and unnecessary how we lose things. From pure carelessness. Fires, wars. The Parthenon, used as a munitions storehouse. I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a...
He used to speak of how with very great paintings it's possible to know them deeply, inhabit them almost, even through copies. Even Proust -- there's a famous passage where Odette opens the door with...
As we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.
And yet isn't it always the inappropriate thing, the thing that doesn't quite work, that's oddly the dearest?
We don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are.
Maybe good luck was like bad luck in that it took a while to sink in. You didn't feel anything at first. The feeling came later on.
Lo extraño era más bien descubrir en el presente un fragmento tan brillante del pasado vivo, dañado y erosionado pero no destruido.
Meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not
A vida - para além do mais que possa ser - é curta. (...) o destino é cruel e talvez não aleatório. (...) a morte ganha sempre, mas isso não quer dizer que tenhamos de lhe baixar a cabeça e a bajular.
It's crazy, she'd said, but I'd be perfectly happy if I could sit looking at the same half dozen paintings for the rest of my life. I can't think of a better way to go insane.)
Гонитва просто за красою — це пастка, пряма стежка до гіркоти й смутку, що красу треба поєднувати з чимось більш значущим.
Иногда, чтобы понять целый мир, нужно сосредоточиться на самой крохотной его части, пристально вглядываться в то, что находится рядом с тобой, пока оно не заменит целое; но с тех самых пор, как картин...
Would.
The world is much stranger than we know or can say. And I know how you think, or how you like to think, but maybe this is one instance where you can’t boil down to pure ‘good’ or pure ‘bad’ like you a...