“I felt I was drawing close to that age, that place in life, where you realize one day what you'd told yourself was a Zen detachment turns out to be naked fear. You'd had one serious love relationship in your life and it had ended in tragedy, and the tragedy had broken something inside you. But instead of trying to repair the broken place, or at least really stop and look at it, you skated and joked. You had friends, you were a decent citizen. You hurt no one. And your life was somehow just about half of what it could be.”
“Families are like countries. They have their own language and jokes and secrets and assumptions about the right and wrong ways of doing things, and some of that always shows in the children, the way something of
Germany or Australia always shows in a German or an Australian, no matter where they go. Outsiders like it or they don't, they feel at home there or they don't. It's like the taste of cilantro.
”
“I decided that if I was worth anything as a person, I ought to be able to let her be with what it was she had to be with then: not urge her to fight it if she was tired of fighting, not ply her with hope, not make her think about who might be upset or worried, not ask anything of her, nothing, just be alive with her while she was still alive.”
“I like that kind of thing. I like warmth and uncalled-for kindness, the small unnoticed generosities that speckle the meanness of the world.”
“I miss women,” he went on. “I miss that kind of intimacy. But I think whatever people do; they do in search of pleasure. Or trying to get rid of pain or fear, which is the same thing, basically. Everything, everything is really about that. Everything is about bringing your mind to a place where it’s at peace”
“We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us....but what if we are a mere after-glow of them?”
“You were most entertaining,” Zayne replied. “That was unintentional,” Eliza muttered.”
“the busy street while I brushed the”
“Governments like it that way. They want their people to see war as a drama of opposites, good and evil, “them” and “us,” victory or defeat. But war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death. It represents the total failure of the human spirit.”
“They sent the shrink round yesterday. He's put me on Prozac. Prozac! He thinks I'm depressed.'
'Aren't you depressed?'
'I wasn't depressed.'
'You did try to kill yourself,' I pointed out.
'Yes. That's what he said too. Apparently that's a classic symptom. It's not thought a sane plan of action for someone in my situation.”
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