We can never know what else might have happened had other competitors been there. The Russian girls could have won, or they could have gotten jet-lagged and choked.” Anna shrugged. “And this is the truth of any game – it can only exist at the moment that it is being played. It’s the same with being an actor. In the end, all we can ever know is the game that was played, in the only world that we know.
We are all living, at most, half of a life, she thought. There was the life that you lived, which consisted of the choices you made. And then, there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn’t chosen. And sometimes, this other life felt as palpable as the one you were living.
How strange and beautiful human beings are. And how fragile.
He passed out, for the second time that winter. “We should stop running into each other like this,” he said to no one.
You are flying over the strawberry field, but you know it’s a trap. This time, you keep flying.
These, of course, are the kinds of vows young people feel comfortable making when they have no idea what life has in store for them.
She liked going to bed early and waking up early. She liked working. She liked that she was good at her work, and she felt proud of the fact that she was well paid for it. She felt pleasure in orderly things – a perfectly efficient section of code, a closet where every item was in its place. She liked solitude and the thoughts of her own interesting and creative mind. She liked to be comfortable.
You realize that, to the boy with the gun, it probably doesn’t matter what particular “other” he is looking at. Or maybe he doesn’t mistake Sam for Ant.
A game she often played with herself to pass the time was to try to figure out the relationships between patients and visitors. She liked to name the people, as she imagined what their lives and connections were.
While Keanu sat in the chair, Audrey lay in the bed next to Tiny Tim, their fingertips casually touching, in the way of people who were entirely comfortable around each other. She almost seemed to be an extension of him, and he, of her. There is love here, she thought.
But when the nurse asked Sam who Sadie was, Sam answered quickly, “My wife.
I imagine people playing. Sometimes, it’s one of our games, but sometimes, it’s any game. The thing I find profoundly hopeful when I’m feeling despair is to imagine people playing, to believe that no matter how bad the world gets, there will always be players.
Sadie had invented a game where if Naomi called bedtime before Sadie did for seven nights in a row, Naomi received a prize. Yes, it was manipulative and basically bribery, but it was also effective.
But my partner died, and now I detest my work, and I have been blue. More than blue really. I have been in the depths of despair. My grandfather, Fred, who I adored, recently died. It begins to seem to me that life is little more than a series of losses, and as you must know by now, I hate losing. And I suppose I came to Friendship because I no longer wished to be in the place I lived and sometimes I no longer wished to even be in my body.
I feel I am not suited for this life,” Emily confessed. “I have devoted months to growing a single carrot and I have no time to read.
Alabaster eyed Emily’s still growing stomach. “How many months are you along now?” “Perhaps eleven. I’m not sure. Soon, I shall be able to roll from Upper Foglands to town.” “I feel you have lived here longer than eleven months, and you were with child when you arrived. Is it possible your unborn child is waiting for you to be married?” “No, I could never have a child so conventional,” Emily said.
Sam texted her. He was starting to resent the elliptical nature of texting Sadie, the way she could ignore half of what he said and, often, the important half.
Love you madly, my sweet friend.” Love you madly. The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.
I have a pain that exists only in my head,” she said, once some of her vitality had been restored. “I have had it my whole life. But when I feel that pain, I am incapacitated by it, and I am certain that I can’t go on.” Alabaster studied Emily. “I think it is your glasses. They are far too small for your face. You should go see the optometrist.
As a wedding gift to Ms. Marks, Dr. Daedalus created a topiary hedge maze in the garden by her house. When asked why she had decided to make such a gift, the doctor replied cryptically, “To make a game is to imagine the person playing it.