It is a terrible thing to feel that you might break down, you might utter a confession that could not then be retrieved.
It is required that we must be fiercely beloved by one individual in order to exist: for Sabbath, Haley was that individual.
Laughter too depends upon memory – a memory of previous laughter. Dr.
You who are non-believers rely upon us, to confirm your sense of superiority. You need to imagine us as unchanged, unchangeable.
I know that there are many essential biological differences between the sexes, of course. But not so many ‘culturally-mandated’ differences. In First World countries we’ve evolved beyond mere biology -it isn’t the fate of the human female to be pregnant continously until she wears out and dies.
And I like your laugh, Sabbath; it’s inaudible.
Like many shy people, once he began talking he seemed not to know how to stop; he lacked the social sleight of hand to change the subject, and he had no idea how to engage another person. Like a runaway vehicle, he plunged on, heedless.
Were you wounded when your marriage collapsed? When your love collapsed? Or does love never “collapse,” only just fade gradually away?
Unfamiliar places could be more dangerous than familiar places, unexpectedly. The boy had been discovering that an unfamiliar place was more easily “haunted” than a familiar place simply because there was less there to distract the memory.
Like editing, gardening requires infinite patience; it requires an essential selflessness, and optimism.
NO KISS FORGOTTEN; it resides in the memory as in the flesh, and so Katya many times felt the press of Marcus Kidder’s warm mouth on hers in the days and especially in the nights following. And her heartbeat quickened in protest: How could you! Kiss him! That old man! Kiss him! Let him put his arms around you ad kiss you and kiss him back! The old man’s mouth and Katya Spivak’s mouth! How could you.
The gardener is the quintessential optimist: not only does he believe that the future will bear out the fruits of his efforts, he believes in the future.
Loving our parents, we bring them into us. They inhabit us. For a long time I believed that I could not bear to live without Mom and Dad – I could not bear to “outlive” them – for to be a daughter without parents did not seem possible to me.
It may be that actual tears have stained the tile floors or soaked into the carpets of such places. It may be that these tears can never be removed. And everywhere the odor of melancholy, that is the very odor of memory.
We never have time, do we, for all that we don’t exactly want to do.
Nowhere in a hospital can you walk without blundering into the memory pools of strangers – their dread of what was imminent in their lives, their false hopes, the wild elation of their hopes, their sudden terrible and irrefutable knowledge; you would not wish to hear echoes of their whispered exchanges – But he was looking so well yesterday, what has happened to him overnight –.
When there is no longer any point in lying, no one will lie.
It struck her to the heart, left her weak, disoriented, that, to Michael Mulvaney, after all, his family wasn’t quite enough.
It is utterly naive, futile, uninformed – to think that our species is exceptional. So designated to master the beasts of the Earth, as in the Book of Genesis!
She will speculate that she didn’t fully know her husband – this will give her leverage to seek him, to come to know him. It will keep her husband “alive” in her memory – elusive, teasing.