The Golden Hour

No.” “The golden hour.” Wilfred waves his hand at the sun, which now burns just above the jagged peaks that form their horizon. “He said that’s when everything looks the most beautiful, just before the sun sets. This luminous air turning everything to gold. He said it made him want to paint the whole world. And then it’s gone, just like that. The sun disappears. The night arrives.

That’s just human illusion. We imagine there’s an order to things, because it’s too awful to consider the randomness of fate.

She loved too much. She staked everything on people she loved. When they were gone, it destroyed her.

I must confess, it puzzles me. You Americans went to such trouble to rid yourself of our quaint little monarchy." "Oh we like to gossip about them, all right. Just not to let them rule over us and all that.

This wave now breaking on the beach had a whole history of its own, which I could never learn, just as we're all upon this earth ignorant of the vast, complicated histories of those living alongside us.

I DON’T KNOW IF YOU’VE ever seen a riot before, up close. It’s not so much a sight or a sound as a feeling, a mayhem. A kaleidoscope, too many sensations all crammed into your brain at once, so you can’t remember what happened when.

She meditates on this human craving for moral authority, more powerful perhaps than the craving for sex.

I thought I’d traveled into another universe. I thought I’d stepped into another Earth entirely, a paradise lit by an eternal sun, a release from everything old, everything dreary. Then I touched land and discovered that freedom was not so straightforward, that you could move to a different universe but you couldn’t escape the prison of your own skin.

But you can't second guess yourself, I've found. You don't k ow what lies.in that parallel dimension, you don't know what fate is contained inside those infinite hypothetical worlds in which you make other choices.

That's the other thing about moral authority: there's never any use in arguing with someone who wants it so badly.

You know, it's a funny word, loyalty. Loyalty to what? And why? ANF especially how, that's the kicker. It seems to me that loyalty requires a suspension of logic, of truth even. Like faith, like superstition, a thing you cling to in defiance of what lies before you in plain sight. On the other hand - like faith or superstition, like love itself - where's the comfort in our world without it.

Hesitations fatal....deliberate all you like upon a course of action, but once you've made your decision , don't for God's sake waver.

...I've come to understand that memory is a capricious friend, and never more unreliable than when we trust it absolutely.

To women and men everywhere who live with depression. You are loved. You are needed. The night will pass.

air, that’s what I murmured as I sidled my way through the crowd, and this was true enough. Certainly I wanted air, and once free of the smokiness and perspiration of the party, I found air in abundance. I also saw a pair of French doors standing open to the evening air, allowing a glimpse of a hallway, and not a footman in sight. Now, it wasn’t as if I meant any harm. I had just sipped champagne