The Splendour Falls

Hindsight, I thought, was like a punishment, remorseless in its clarity and painfully unable to change what had gone before.

Because everything does make sense, when you look at it from the right angle. All you have to do is find out what that angle is, for whatever it is you want to understand, and bang, the universe becomes a rational place.

To sail beyond the sunset… I’d thought that beautiful, once. But now I knew it was a wasted effort, chasing sunsets. There was nothing on the other side.

I think we all make choices in our lives that set us down the road to happiness or disappointment. It’s just that we can’t always see where the road is leading us until we’re halfway there.

I don't know--is happiness a thing we choose, I wonder? Or is it something handed out to some, and not to others?" "A bit of both, I should think." "...I'm not so sure... I think we all make choices in our lives that set us down the road to happiness or disappointment. It's just that we can't always see where the road is leading us until we're halfway there.

That's how you have to read this book, you see. You wade through a few sentences, then stop and think about them, then wade through a few more.

Even Austrian landladies recognise the hand of destiny at work.

Of course,” Armand was saying to Simon, “you know that it was an American, like yourself, who nearly ruined the wine-making in France?” “We’re Canadians.” “But that is the same thing, surely?

I had met death before, in different forms--I knew quite well the pattern of my grieving. First came shock, and then tears, and then a bitter anger, followed by a softer grief that time would wear away.

I clung to him while, overhead, the clouds burst forth a final brilliant streak of golden red, as if the gates of heaven themselves had briefly opened, and closed again. My trembling stilled; the wind seemed to fall silent, and some weight I didn't fully understand, a melancholy ages old, was lifted from my sobbing chest and drifted like an answered prayer into the darkness.

Sometimes, the scales of justice find a level of their own, without our help... And sometimes, in seeking justice, we don't always serve it.

Well, it was over now, I thought. Time everyone forgot, forgave, let be.

...he raised a hand to touch my face, a touch of promise, warm and sure, and as I struggled to smile back at him he kissed me. It felt so very right, so beautiful; tears pricked behind my lashes as life flowed through all my hollow limbs, and I lost all sense of place and time. It might have been a minute or an hour...

It was a thing intangible, yet clearly felt—the sense that time was moving round him, past him, leaving him untouched.

Hindsight, I thought, was like a punishment, remorseless in its clarity and painfully unable to change what had gone before. Turning

Flirtatious men I could handle. It was the serious ones, like Neil, who made me nervous—the ones who looked straight at you and spoke simply and had no use for games. Men like Neil, I thought, might talk of love and mean it, while flirtatious men demanded nothing, promised less, and never disappointed.