Sunset Park

Wounds are an essential part of life, and until you are wounded in some way, you cannot become a man.

[T]he only luxury he allows himself is buying books, paperback books, mostly novels, American novels, British novels, foreign novels in translation, but in the end books are not luxuries so much as necessities, and reading is an addiction he has no wish to be cured of.

...and when she thinks of that generation of silent men, the boys who lived through the Depression and grew up to become soldiers or not-soldiers in the war, she doesn’t blame them for refusing to talk, for not wanting to go back into the past, but how curious it is, she thinks, how sublimely incoherent that her generation, which doesn’t have much of anything to talk about yet, has produced men who never stop talking, men like Bing, for example, or men like Jake, who talks about himself at the slightest prompting, who has an opinion on every subject, who spews forth words from morning to night, but just because he talks, that doesn’t mean she wants to listen to him, whereas with the silent men, the old men, the ones who are nearly gone now, she would give anything to hear what they have to say.

Yes, she is in love with him, and yes, in spite of his qualms and inner hesitations, he loves her back, however improbable that might seem to him. Note here for the record that he is not someone with a special fixation on young girls. Until now, all the women in his life have been more or less his own age. Pilar therefore does not represent an embodiment of some ideal female type for him--she is merely herself, a small piece of luck he stumbled across one afternoon in a public park, an exception to every rule.

No, she can weather his disappointments if she has to, that isn't the problem, she can put up with anything as long as she feels he is solidly with her, but that is precisely what she doesn't feel anymore, and even if he seems content to glide along with her out of old habits, the reflex of old affections, she is becoming ever more certain, no, certain is probably too strong a word for it, she is becoming ever more willing to entertain the idea that he has stopped loving her.

He is twenty-eight years old, and to the best of his knowledge he has no ambitions. No burning ambitions, in any case, no clear idea of what building a plausible future might entail for him.

The grinding search for money can crush the spirit out of you unless you're made of steel.

The human body lives in the mind of one who possesses a human body, and to live inside the human body possessed of the mind that perceives another human body is to live in a world of others.

Non ricorda più l'ultima volta che è riuscita a dormire per sei ore piene, sei ore ininterrotte senza svegliarsi da un brutto sogno o scoprire che i suoi occhi si erano aperti all'alba, e sa che questi problemi di sonno sono un brutto segno, un avviso inequivocabile del fatto che l'aspettano guai, ma malgrado quello che continua a ripeterle sua madre, non vuole tornare ai farmaci. Prendere una di quelle pillole è come inghiottire una piccola dose di morte. Quando inizi con quella roba, i tuoi giorni vengono trasformati in un regime stordente di smemoratezza e confusione, e non c'è momento in cui senti la testa imbottita di batuffoli di cotone e brandelli di carta. Ellen non vuole chiudere la sua vita per sopravvivere alla sua vita. Vuole che i suoi sensi siano svegli, formulare pensieri che non svaniscano nel mentre le si presentano, sentirsi viva in tutti i modi in cui un tempo si sentiva viva. Ora non sono in programma collassi. Non può permettersi altri cedimenti, ma malgrado gli sforzi di tenersi salda nel qui e ora, la pressione si è nuovamente accumulata in lei, ricomincia a sentire fitte del vecchio panico, il nodo nella gola, il sangue che le scorre troppo in fretta nelle vene, il cuore contratto e il polso frenetico. Paura senza oggetto, come gliel'ha descritta una volta il dottor Burnham. No, dice ora fra sé: paura di morire senza aver vissuto.

It was the best thing that could have happened to him, it was the worst thing that could have happened to him.

That is the idea he is toying with, Renzo says, to write an essay about the things that don’t happen, the lives not lived, the wars not fought, the shadow worlds that run parallel to the world we take to be the real world, the not-said and the not-done, the not-remembered.

When he talks about the world, then, he is referring to his world, to the small, circumscribed sphere of his own life, and not to the world-at-large, which is too large and too broken for him to have any effect on it.

The walking wounded, opening their veins and bleeding in public.

I was the best thing that could have happened to him, it was the worst thing that could have happened to him.

El júbilo de ver de nuevo su rostro, de volver a abrazarla, de escuchar su risa, de verla comer, de mirar sus manos otra vez, la dicha de contemplar su cuerpo desnudo, de besar su cuerpo desnudo, de ver cómo frunce el ceño, cómo se cepilla el pelo, se pinta las uñas, la alegría de estar otra vez con ella en la ducha, de hablar de libros con ella otra vez, de ver cómo se le llenan los ojos de lágrimas, de ver cómo camina, de oír cómo insulta a Ángela, el regocijo de leerle en voz alta, de oírla eructar, de ver cómo se cepilla los dientes, el gozo de desnudarla de nuevo, de juntar otra vez la boca con la suya, de mirarle la nuca, el placer de andar por la calle con ella, de ponerle el brazo sobre los hombros, de lamerle los pechos de nuevo, de penetrar en su cuerpo, de volver a despertarse a su lado, de hablar de matemáticas con ella, de comprarle ropa, de darle y recibir masajes en la espalda, de volver a hablar de su porvenir, la alegría de vivir otra vez con ella en el presente, de oírla decir que lo quiere, de decirle que la quiere, de volver a sentir la mirada de sus intensos ojos negros, y luego la tortura de verla abordar el autobús en la terminal de Port Authority en la tarde del 3 de enero con la plena conciencia de que hasta abril, dentro de más de tres meses, no tendrá ocasión de volver a estar con ella.

...in the end books are not luxuries so much as necessities, and reading is an addiction he has no wish to be cured of.