Nine Lives

The awful thing about loneliness, Jack thought, not for the first time, is that it isn’t always cured by other people.

He’d always wondered what was worse: to feel emptiness and not know what would make it go away, or to feel emptiness and know exactly what was missing. Tonight, for whatever reason, he seemed to have the answer. He understood with evangelical clarity how fleeting our lives are, and how foolish it is to mourn those who’ve left too soon.

Just because my boot was tapping didn't mean I liked the song

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

Une pensée horrible traversa l’esprit de Caroline : C’est une liste de condamnés. Quelqu’un nous a marqués du sceau de la mort. Cela lui vint de manière automatique, tout comme elle pensait automatiquement, chaque fois que le téléphone sonnait, qu’on l’appelait pour lui annoncer une indicible tragédie. Elle relut la liste, puis rit intérieurement de sa propre morbidité. Évidemment, s’il s’agissait d’une liste de personnes vivantes, alors tous ces gens étaient condamnés à mourir, tôt ou tard. Il n’empêche que cette lettre avait quelque chose d’inhabituel et d’angoissant ; elle lui rappelait un roman de Muriel Spark : Memento Mori. Sans doute décortiquait-elle trop ce qui n’était sûrement qu’une banale suite de noms.

She ordered iced tea, a smoked chicken leg with rice and beans, and fried plantains on the side. The old Latino guy behind the counter scanned her face, then asked her one of her least favorite questions. “Where you from, chica?” She hadn’t heard this particular question in a while, but she’d heard it enough in her life. That and “What are you?” or, the less rude but just as condescending “Aren’t you pretty?

We all know that our time on earth is brief, the beads seemed to say. We know it, even if we don’t always feel it. Our faces and bodies are only beautiful for a short time.

Matthew and Michelle had been looking at a shelf filled with children’s toys, mostly neglected or broken or forgotten, and Michelle said, “I’ve entered the portion of my life where everything fills me with sadness.” “Have you?” said Matthew, shocked by the sudden confession. She’d laughed. “Sorry, did I say that out loud? I’m being dramatic, or that’s what Pete would say. I just feel like the exciting and mysterious parts of my life are over, and now everything fills me with nostalgia. Truthfully, I’m just being a baby about growing old.” “I think I know what you mean,” Matthew said. “Being young was scary, but it was also interesting.

moment he’d been eligible. He never thought of himself as having particular feelings