They seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society dying of too much choice.
No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well.
But there's something missing in them, even the nice ones. It's like they're permanently absent-minded, like that can't quite remember who they are.
All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.
You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.
Humanity is so adaptable [...] Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.
I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight.
Men and women tried each other on, casually, like suits, rejecting whatever did not fit.
Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.
As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter...
Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered.
Perhaps he was merely being friendly. Perhaps he saw the look on my face and mistook it for something else. Really what I wanted was the cigarette.
I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.
When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.
I beliebe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light.
I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light.
Sanity is a valuable possesion; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.
A bachelor, a studio, those were the names for that kind of apartment. Separate entrance it would say in the ads, and that meant you could have sex, unobserved.
He put his arms around me. We were both feeling miserable. How were we to know we were happy, even then? Because we at least had that: arms, around.
One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope. In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive?
It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.
