“There's a certain language, a dying language, and I can't remember who speaks it or where in the world they are, but in that language the future is referred to as being behind us. It must be behind us, since we can see the past. We walk backwards, blind, into the future, only knowing where we've already been.”
“I know this feeling. It's a familiar one. The feeling of knowing that everything has changed, and you have to keep going, but you don't know what to do.”
“They say that God never closes a door without opening a window.
I hate that saying. Closing a door is an asshole move, and opening a window just means you can look at, but not take part in, whatever is on the other side. Or maybe the window is there so you can throw yourself out of it.
Either way, it's a shitty deal, and why wouldn't you just kick the door back open?”
“Borders. Tresholds. Doorways. Windows. Neither inside nor out. Not one thing any longer, but not yet another. The in between.
Order fails, and ghosts come in.”
“I want one more moment, one more word, one more touch, and I'm not the only one. Everywhere I look there are hungry ghosts, and I am one of them.”
“New starts are rare in this life, and they become rarer the older you get. When you are little and everything is before you, you can become anything, anything at all, but as you get older, you calcify, get stiffer, less able to stretch and bend. Before you even realize it, your personality is a habit. Your mistakes are habits. Everything about you is a habit, and the chances to break them are slimmer and slimmer.”
“I feel like a bird, sometimes, I think. My bones are sometimes as hollow as bird bones. I call and call in my own bird call, but I can’t find anyone who will call back.”
“Poor girl, so tragic, so bad, poor girl, so dreadful, so sad...
But people are always judging, even when they express sympathy.”
“Our fingers brush together for a brief moment, and I'm suddenly overwhelmed with the need to be touched.
Not fucked. Not kissed. Not titillated. Just...held, perhaps. Embraced. Enfolded.”
“You're kind, someone is going to hurt you really bad someday.”
“Order fails, and ghosts come in.
Now there are hands on my body, the sheets tangling like a snare around us. He stinks of cigarettes and booze, and I am floating, falling, somewhere, between here and there, and I think:
Remember me.
And I think:
Want me.
And I think:
Stay with me.
But no one ever does.”
“And suddenly I think: nothing is fine. It’s never fine. It’s always an illusion. Happy smiles, assurances, jokes, laughter—there’s no way to tell if it is real, or a mask. There’s always something terrible hurtling toward you, something that will destroy all that you love and alter your life forever. You may not know it, but it’s coming and there’s nothing you can do. No amount of hammering, or holy water, or screaming will change that.
You can scream no, and stop, and please, you can reach out and try to bend fate to your will with your own two hands, but it has already been decided. In every moment, a thousand accidents wait to happen, already in place and poised to strike, and we don’t even know it”
“Caring too much leads to heartbreak. Wanting something too much leads to despair. The Buddhists probably have it right, that the root of all suffering is desire, but I don't know how to stop feeling these things. They are feelings. You have to feel them.”
“But I don't care about guys all the time. I want to fall in love with Daniel. But I don't want to get hurt, and that's what love means. It means getting hurt.”
“Simon didn’t want to poke his nose into a “girl thing.” Potentially dangerous territory, that.”
“I like his optimism,' I said. 'I like the way when he and some other rabbis saw a jackal in the ruins of Jerusalem, and the others began to cry, he laughed and said that just as the prophecy of the destruction of the temple was fulfilled, so the prophecy of the rebuilding would also be fulfilled. I like that.”
“I've just fallen on some bad luck and landed jelly side down.”
“I hate them!' she cried. 'It's not fair!'
'No, it isn't,' Frederick said gently.
'I can't do it all!'
'No. You can't.' After a long moment he said, 'But you can do what you can.'
'And what if that isn't enough?'
Frederick held her shoulders and took a step back. He looked in her eyes. 'Enough for what?'
'For my family.'
'What more could they ask for than what you've given?”
“Contrary to a tenacious myth, France is not owned by California pension funds or the Bank of China, any more than the United States belongs to Japanese and German investors. The fear of getting into such a predicament is so strong today that fantasy often outstrips reality. The reality is that inequality with respect to capital is a far greater domestic issue than it is an international one.”
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