The Lacuna

The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.

Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.

...nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.

Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down." - Mrs. Brown

you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece

You force people to stop asking questions, and before you know it they have auctioned off the question mark, or sold it for scrap. No boldness. No good ideas for fixing what's broken in the land. Because if you happen to mention it's broken, you are automatically disqualified.

Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.

The past is all we know of the future.

War so conspicuously benefits rich men and kills the poor ones.

This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.

He needs to go rub his soul against life.

The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don't know.

Everyone should get dirt on his hands each day. Doctors, intellectuals. Politicians, most of all. How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man, if we don't respect his work?

There are some who'd hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think's been too lucky.

Soli, let me tell you. The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.

In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.

What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade. I'm one of those. We don't bend anything.

Bitter words normally evaporate with the moisture of breath, after a quarrel. In order to become permanent, they require transcribers, reporters, complicit black hearts.

How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want.

It's a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.

Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he's entitled to joy rather than submission?

You know reviewers, they are the wind in their own sails.

But newspapers have a duty to truth,' Van said. Lev clucked his tongue. 'They tell the truth only as the exception. Zola wrote that the mendacity of the press could be divided into two groups: the yellow press lies every day without hesitating. But others, like the Times, speak the truth on all inconsequential occasions, so they can deceive the public with the requisite authority when it becomes necessary.' Van got up from his chair to gather the cast-off newspapers. Lev took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. 'I don't mean to offend the journalists; they aren't any different from other people. They're merely the megaphones of the other people.

Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what's not in it.

Because nothing wondrous can come in this world unless it rests on the shoulders of kindness.

An imperfectly remembered life is a useless treachery. Every day, more fragments of the past roll around heavily in the chambers of an empty brain, shedding bits of color, a sentence or a fragrance, something that changes and then disappears. It drops like a stone to the bottom of the cave.

Mother could go for one year without food, but not one day without her lip sticks.

A novel! Why do you say this won't liberate anyone? Where does any man go to be free, whether he is poor or rich or even in prison? To Dostoyevsky! To Gogol!

No reporter worth his buttons will let the facts intrude on a good story.