Lost in Translation

If there was one thing she knew by then, by age twenty-two, it was that she had to get far away and stay away. Here in his world she was trapped in an intolerable corner, which seemed to grow tighter and tighter each year. And now no place in America felt right.

But in the end he didn't love her enough to fight for her.

That as a human being I'm not necessarily static, but... evolving. That I'm supposed to grow and develop, just like the physical world, the planet, the universe.

So this is one of those times when life is just handing you something, telling you what to do, which way to go. So enjoy it. It'll be fun. I guarantee. I can't guarantee we'll find the goddamn thing, but it'll be interesting. Then if we do find it - if we do- the payoff's huge.

Everything looks different. The houses are all these wild colors. The light is strange. It smells primeval. You're on Mars." "You are talking about driving?" Lin attempted to clarify. "About wanderlust," she answered.

I don't believe fundamentally in anything but the awakening of spirit, hope, and freedom.

Everything except the freedom to be what she wanted to be - whatever that was. She had to break away. Whether he liked it or not. She had to.

Did you really love her? Did you really enter her heart and mind? Or did the two of you always remain outside each other?

She, too, could become someone else. Eventually. Or she'd told herself all these years.

He looked at her. There was something about her. When he was with her he felt happy, excited; when he was apart from her he found himself wanting to be with her again.

Breaking some respected boundaries means a torrent of new life.

I don't hope," he answered, eyes on her. "I never hope. I just live in gratitude for what comes.

What was more brutal than loss of hope?

But I get frightened sometimes," she admitted. "I know. Fear is only fear, though." "And somehow you live without it." "No," he corrected her. "You live with it.

Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfil them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.

She pictured herself in a world without him, a world where she had only her own heart and mind to follow. A world open and blank with possibility; terrifying, almost.

He forgot all that was strange about her face when she smiled. Because then, pleasure just burst out from somewhere inside her. He liked that. It was uncontrolled.

They connected on every level - mental, philosophical, emotional. But she couldn't have him, not all of him.

Grief is a killer, isn't it?" he said. "Brings you right up to the truth.

full of rage at a world which seemed all wrong to her and dreaming about someplace where she would belong, really belong.

She shrugged, knowing all too well how easy it was to long for a different life, how hard it was to find one's way there.

A door to an alternate self. This self was another Alice, not the childhood Alice: capable, free in the world, independent.