Being raised in an unstable household makes you understand that the world doesn’t exist to accommodate you, which... is something a lot of people struggle to understand well into their adulthood. It makes you realize how quickly a situation can shift, how danger really is everywhere. But crises when the occur, do not catch you off guard; you have never believed you lived under a shelter of some essential benevolence. And an unstable childhood makes you appreciate calmness and not crave excitement.
She opened her mouth but did not immediately speak, and I felt, simultaneously, the impulse to coax the words from her and the impulse to suppress them. I always thought I wanted to know a secret, or I wanted an event to unfold – I wanted my life to start – but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.
Time seemed, as it always does in adulthood after a particular stretch has concluded, no matter how ponderous or unpleasant the stretch was to endure, to have passed quickly indeed.
I had no idea, of course, that of all the feelings of my youth that would pass, it was this one, of an abundance of time so great as to routinely be unfillable, that would vanish with the least ceremony.
Fred!” the nurse said, though they had never met. “How are we today?” Reading the nurse’s name tag, Mr. Bennet replied with fake enthusiasm, “Bernard! We’re mourning the death of manners and the rise of overly familiar discourse. How are you?
Once I had asked, ‘But are you a Democrat or a Republican?” and Jonathan said, “I’m socially progressive but fiscally conservative,” and Doug Miles, a football player who also came to Sunday breakfast but only ever read the sports section and ignored everyone, lifted his head and said, “Is that like being bisexual?” Which I actually thought was funny, even though I was pretty sure Doug was a jerk.
I’m old enough to know that sometimes you don’t get a second chance.
It’s not that you’re wrong. But when you say stuff like this, it makes life a lot less enjoyable.
Such compliments – they were thrilling but almost impossible to absorb in this quantity, at this pace. It was like she was being pelted with magnificent hail, and she wished she could save the individual stones to examine later, but they’d exist with such potency only now, in this moment.
Liz felt the loneliness of confiding something true in a person who didn’t care.
As they sat, Kathy de Bourgh smiled and said, “Now that we’ve both apologized within the first thirty seconds of our conversation about women and power, shall we begin?
When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always twenty years behind the times. – Mark Twain.
I take it you don’t believe in love at first sight.” “Does anyone over the age of thirteen? Do you?” “I don’t, no,” Darcy said. “But I don’t rule out for others what I haven’t experienced firsthand.
In general, I have no desire to ever have another conversation about Hillary Clinton, to debate the role her gender played. I’m not sure I want to have any conversation about sexism. If someone doesn’t see that gender played a huge role, why would I waste my time trying to convince them?
Sometimes it amazes me how much these defining parts of our lives hinge on chance.
When I think of Henry and Oliver and Mike, I feel as if they are three different models – templates, almost – and I wonder if they are the only three in the world: the man who is with you completely, the man who is with you but not with you, the man who will get as close to you as he can without ever becoming yours. It would be arrogant to claim no other dynamics exist just because I haven’t experienced them, but I have to say that I can’t imagine what they are. I hope that I am wrong.
I’d think, One of the times she leaves will be the last time I see her. It destroyed me. I didn’t want us to have a last time, and that was how I realized I’d fallen in love with you.
Part of getting what you want is asking for it.
A reality show isn’t unlike the Nobel Peace Prize, then,” Mr. Bennet said. “In that they both require nominations.
I bet things would be easier for you if you either realized you’re not that weird or decided that being weird isn’t bad.