In the fourth level, for example, Alice, after a major operation, becomes separated from her body, and she has to chase through the hospital to catch it, like Peter Pan and his shadow. This dissociation was something Sam had experienced many times – the feeling that your body, when it was sick, was no longer your own.
With equal intensity, she feared her New York life was the best of all possible worlds, and that once she left New York, the gates would come down and lock, and she’d be too feeble and parochial to ever be allowed to return.
It is strange, you think, how much people hate going to doctors, but how much they love watching shows about doctors.
There would be leaves in the fall, and snow in the winter, and cherry blossoms in the spring. The world had always looked painfully beautiful to him when he was sick. It was only when he was alone and he couldn’t participate in the business of living that he tended to notice how lovely being alive was.
Yes, she loved him, but she also liked him. She liked herself when she was with him.
Why was it acceptable for apparently well-meaning people to see the world in such a general way?
If their traumas are the most interesting things about them, how do they get over any of it?
It is relatively easy to pack up your life when you’re twenty-three, and Sadie was significantly finished by the time Dov returned from the break.
A world where everyone is blind and deaf to any culture or experience that is not their own. I hate that world, don’t you? I’m terrified of that world, and I don’t want to live in it. My dad, who I barely knew, was Jewish. My mom was an American-born Korean. I was raised by Korean immigrant grandparents in Koreatown, Los Angeles. And as any mixed race person will tell you – to be half of two things is to be whole of nothing.
Beauty, after all, is almost always a matter of angles and resolve.
Generally, obsessively, licking her wounds. What a funny turn of phrase, she thought. Licking your wounds would only make them worse, no? The mouth was filled with so much bacteria.
Go ask Sadie what it would take to turn Mapletown into an online role-playing game. And here I am. I obey the giant bird of dreams.
I don’t think she wants me to visit her.” “It doesn’t take long to get to Boston anymore,” Dong Hyun said. “It takes about six hours by plane. Same amount of time as it’s always taken.” “Faster than getting from Venice to Echo Park in traffic,” Dong Hyun said.
But life was always arriving. There was always another gate to pass through.
Zweisamkeit’ is the feeling of being alone even when you’re with other people.” Simon turned to look in his husband’s eyes. “Before I met you, I felt this constantly. I felt it with my family, my friends, and every boyfriend I ever had. I felt it so often that I thought this was the nature of living. To be alive was to accept that you were fundamentally alone.
If it doesn’t work, all we’ve lost is a lot of time and money.” Sam laughed. “Let’s do this,” he said.
Sam did not believe his body could feel anything but pain, and so he did not desire pleasure in the same way that other people seemed to. Sam was happiest when his body was feeling nothing. He was happiest when he did not have to think about his body – when he could forget that he had a body at all.
The best part of this moment, he thought, is that everything is still possible.
Did she ever reply?” Bong Cha narrowed her eyes at Sam, deciding if her grandson was trying to trick her into appearing foolish. “Yes, in my mind, she did. I knew your mother so well I could play her part. The same with my own mother and my grandmother and my childhood best friend, Euna, who drowned in the lake by her cousin’s house. There are no ghosts, but up here” – she gestured toward her head – “it’s a haunted house.
The Call of the Wild.