I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt a long way away from everybody I had known and loved when I was a girl. I missed people. For a minute I stood there and wished I could get back to that time. Then with my next thought I understood clearly that I couldn’t do that. No. But it came to me then that my life did not remotely resemble the life I thought I’d have when I had been young and looking ahead to things.
But I guess even the knights were vessels to someone. Isn’t that the way it worked? But then everyone is always a vessel to someone.
Why don’t you kids dance? he decided to say, and then said it. “Why don’t you dance?
Maybe once, maybe years ago, I was a different kind of human being. I’ve forgotten, I don’t know for sure.
But he understood it was over, and he felt able to let her go. He was sure their life together had happened in the way he said it had. But it was something that had passed. And that passing – though it seemed impossible and he’d fought against it – would become part of him now, too, as surely as anything else he’d left behind.
In those olden days, when they built cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God.
He did not know what to do. Not just now, he thought, not just in this, not just about this, today and tomorrow, but every day on the earth.
I lifted him out. I held him. I held that half of him.
He seemed full of some goodness she didn’t understand.
I wish I could be like everybody else in this neighborhood – your basic, normal, unaccomplished person-and go up to my bedroom, and lie down, and sleep. It’s going to be a big day today, and I’d like to be ready for it. I wish I could sleep and wake up and find everything in my life different. Not necessarily just the big things,... but things clearly within my power.
She kept talking. She told everyone. There was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time, she quit trying.
I don’t fire up the prose. I just tell it straight and don’t fool around with it.
It’s funny how we can be in love with someone one day, and the next we can easily fall in love with someone else.
He was going somewhere, he knew that. And if it was the wrong direction, sooner or later he’d find it out.
In his better moments, Mr Baxter is a decent, ordinary guy – a guy you wouldn’t mistake for anyone special. But he is special. In my book, he is. For one thing he has a full night’s sleep behind him, and he’s just embraced his wife before leaving for work. But even before he goes, he’s already expected home a set number of hours later. True, in the grander scheme of things, his return will be an event of small moment – but an event nonetheless.
Things change, he says. I don’t know how they do. But they do without your realizing it or wanting them to.
In addition to being in love, we like each other and enjoy one another’s company.
You sound like a nice man,” the woman said. “Do I? Well, that’s nice of you to say.” He knew he should hang up now, but it was good to hear a voice, even his own, in the quiet room.
It’s seldom anything turns out to be better than you expected it to be. Usually it’s the other way around.
Physical love, that impulse that drives you to someone special, as well as love of the other person’s being, his or her essence, as it were. Carnal love and, well, call it sentimental love, the day-to-day caring about the other person.