Dying to Know You

Sometimes the course of our lives depends on what we do or don't do in a few seconds, a heartbeat, when we either seize the opportunity, or just miss it. Miss the moment and you never get a chance again.

However much you love somebody, you should always keep a part of yourself to yourself. Never give it all. You can never be yourself otherwise.

She was--I keep using the past tense; I ought to say she is--one of those people who, at first sight, look plain, are quiet, unassertive, unmemorable even. But who, when they start to talk and you get to know them, become more and more attractive and impressive, and you see that in fact they are beautiful. Not conventionally beautiful, not celebrity beautiful, but beautiful all through.

I don’t actually think “true love” is such a good term because love can only be true. If it isn’t true it can’t be love.

And trust dies from ifs and buts

Life is not like a novel, but a novel can be like life. The best ones always are.

The plain unwelcome fact is that sometimes life stymies you.

Rooms are a fixed size, which can't be altered without pulling down walls and building new ones. They should be unchanging in shape and proportions. But sometimes they do change depending on who's in them.

I sometimes wonder whether most people choose their hobbies because they lust after the gear more than for the benefits of the activities themselves.

But the bit I liked best was where it said it's impossible to define love because it takes so many forms and is so complicated.

In all our times together so far, this was the first time I felt we were enjoying ourselves, without strain or any sense of difference of age or deference, concession or inequality. It was, I thought afterwards, the first time we had met as ourselves, untrammelled, unguarded and in tune.

Unfortunately, ..., all too often a joke tells the truth.

when I am talking to myself, whom am I talking to and who is doing the talking? Are we all in fact two people, not one? Are we all One and Another? What I know is that I have an 'everyday self,' the one who does things, says things, deals with the ups and downs of daily life, and another, an 'inner self,' the one I think of as my real self, the self who observes everything my everyday self does and comments and judges, praises and dispraises, considers what would be best to do and not to do, and assesses the results.

No, but still, the fact is, at least this is how it seems to me, everybody has to learn about it [love] from scratch for themselves. And we all make the same mistakes time and again while we're learning.