“The only problem with seeing people you know is that they know you.”
“Before everything, I used to do this thing when I was upset-I used to take all my feelings and push them down inside me. It was like they were garbage and I was compacting it to get more in. I felt like I could keep pushing all my feelings down into my socks and I wouldn't have to worry about them. I don't think I do that anymore.”
“I was surprised that every single person I talked to had a story about how depression had affected their lives. Carmelita Gamboa, a teenager in Michigan, later wrote to me, "The sad thing is, after a while, it starts to feel like home". It does, doesn't it?”
“So what does that make you think about God?
I think that maybe, if human beings have souls, that maybe their souls are in their eyes. That maybe that's what the color is. Their souls.”
“Every time I open my mouth to say what I'm feeling, something stops me and I have to make sure I'm not going to say anything stupid. It makes me crazy. And then, once I've figured out what I'm going to say, I have to go over it, over and over again, just to see if what I'm feeling is right. And then I have to figure out how to say it.”
“I think that maybe, if human beings have souls, that maybe their souls are in their eyes. That maybe that’s what the color is. Their souls."
"Well, they say the eyes are the windows to the soul."
"No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, the actual color is kind of like your spirit, like your soul. And the black space, maybe the black space is the tunnel that people talk about when they die. Do you know what I mean? Like when you die, you go into the eyes of the person you’re looking at and walk through their eyes and, at the other end, that’s where heaven is.”
“He says everything like it happened to someone else.”
“I knowed a man in Paphlagonia who'd swallow a live snake every morning, when he got up. He used to say, he was certain of one thing, that nothing worse would happen to him all day. 'Course they made him eat a bowlful of hairy centipedes before they hung him, so maybe that claim was a bit presumptive.”
“What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with this extraordinary excitement?
It is Clarissa, he said.
For there she was.”
“You're always in a rush, or else you're too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, the long hours, the traveling, the broken sleep have all crept into your being and become part of you, so everyone can see it, in your posture, your gaze, the way you move and talk.”
“Unwrapping the paper carefully so it doesn’t tear, I find a beautiful red leather
box. Cartier. It’s familiar, thanks to my second-chance earrings and my watch.
Cautiously, I open the box to discover a delicate charm bracelet of silver, or platinum
or white gold—I don’t know, but it’s absolutely enchanting. Attached to it
are several charms: the Eiffel Tower, a London black cab, a helicopter—Charlie
Tango, a glider—the soaring, a catamaran—The Grace, a bed, and an ice cream
cone? I look up at him, bemused.
“Vanilla?” He shrugs apologetically, and I can’t help but laugh. Of course.
“Christian, this is beautiful. Thank you. It’s yar.” He grins.
My favorite is the heart. It’s a locket.
“You can put a picture or whatever in that.”
“A picture of you.” I glance at him through my lashes. “Always in my heart.”
He smiles his lovely, heartbreakingly shy smile.
I fondle the last two charms: a letter C—oh yes, I was his first girlfriend to
use his first name. I smile at the thought. And finally, there’s a key.
“To my heart and soul,” he whispers.”
“It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.”
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