Later still, the war memorials would sprout from the earth, dwelling not on the loss, but on what the loss had won, and what a fine thing it was to be victorious. “Victorious and dead,” some muttered, “is a poor sort of victory.
Then this is how you do it,’ and kissed her slowly, letting time fade away. And he couldn’t remember any other kiss that felt quite the same.
We live with the decisions we makeThat’s what bravery is. Standing by the consequences of your mistakes.
Scars are just another kind of memory.
There are times when the ocean is not the ocean – not blue, not even water, but some violent explosion of energy and danger: fierceness on a scale only gods can summon.
Such a mysterious business, motherhood. How brave a woman must be to embark on it.
To have any kind of a future you’ve got to give up hope of ever changing your past.
Nature allowed only the fit and the lucky to share this paradise-in-the-making.
Years bleach away the sense of things until all that’s left is a bone-white past, stripped of feeling and significance.
When he wakes sometimes from dark dreams of broken cradles, and compasses without bearings, he pushes the unease down, lets the daylight contradict it. And isolation lulls him with the music of the lie.
Sometimes life turns out hard, Isabel. Sometimes it just bites right through you. And sometimes, just when you think it’s done its worst, it comes back and takes another chunk.
Once a child gets into your heart, there’s no right or wrong about it.
Right and wrong can be like bloody snakes: so tangled up that you can’t tell which is which until you’ve shot ’em both, and then it’s too late.
When it comes to their kids, parents are all just instinct and hope. And fear. Rules and laws fly straight out the window.
The law’s the law, but people are people.
History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent.
Every end is the beginning of something else.
That’s how life goes on – protected by the silence that anesthetizes shame.
It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization.
Sometimes it’s good to leave the past in the past.
You don’t think ahead in years or months: you think about this hour, and maybe the next. Anything else is speculation.