“People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.”
“Feeling is not selective, I keep telling you that. You can’t feel pain, you aren’t gonna feel anything else, either.”
“Riding the train gives him too much time to think, he has decided. Too much thinking can ruin you.”
“. . . crazy world or maybe it's just the view we have of it, looking through a crack in the door, never being able to see the whole room, the whole picture.”
“Depending on the reality one must face, one may prefer to opt for illusion.”
“The small seed of despair cracks open and sends experimental tendrils upward to the fragile skin of calm holding him together.”
“Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningles actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.”
“And do not be paralyzed. It is better to move than to be unable to move, because you fear loss so much: loss of order, loss of security, loss of predictability.”
“People have a right to be the way they are.”
“And what about tomorrow then? And all the tomorrows to come? Why can't we talk about it? Why can't we ever talk about it?”
“She hands him his coffee; crosses to the doorway; motes of dust flutter nervously in her wake.”
“with grief? There is no dealing; he knows that much. There is simply the stubborn, mindless hanging on until it is over. Until you are through it. But something has happened in the process. The old definitions, the neat, knowing pigeonholes have disappeared. Or else they no longer apply. His eyes move again to the calendar. Wednesday, November fifth. Of course. Obvious. All the painful self-examination ; the unanswered questions. At least he knows what is wrong today. Today is Jordan’s birthday. Today he would have been nineteen.”
“He hangs on now, pressing his hand lightly against the wall, below the window, waiting for the familiar arrow of pain. Only there is none. An oddly pleasant swell of memory, a wave of warmth flooding over him, sliding back, slowly. It is a first”
“Everything seems excessive, now, and too intense, too important.”
“People use people according to their own needs. Or don't use them. When a primary need is one of safety.”
“Because it has always been easier to believe himself capable of evil than to accept evil in others.”
“It has always been easier to believe himself capable of evil than to accept evil in others.”
“And once I wanted to be a fireman. Then”
“Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.”
“fast. Get those months, days, hours, minutes out of the way, it can’t be quick enough.”
“Donald Trump, if elected, would find a way to turn being the president into a moneymaking operation. Sanders”
“The moment I fell in love with her. She made me feel weightless, feel free, feel airborne. So I kicked, and I pushed, and for the past year, that’s all I’ve been doing because it didn’t feel the same and I knew in my heart that without her, I’d never be able to coast.”
“We sat with our arms around each other, holding too tightly and not tightly enough.”
“Guilliame said in a low voice, ‘It was poison. It was in the feed. Lamen noticed a dead field mouse near the grain stores. If not for that warning, we’d have lost all the horses. Not just this one.’ The Prince stayed with the horse while Lamen touched him on the shoulder, then arranged for a horsemaster to put the horse down. The Prince only rose when the horse was dead. The”
“Life ... is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
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