Jonathan

“Sofie arrives a few hours later. She finds it in herself to stroke her dead father's hair. Standing there, her mind is blank. If anything, it is a sea, an endlessness of translucent molluscs.

Then she exchanges a few words with a nurse. About what came before, about the death, how it happened, and a little more about the practicalities at hand, where her father will be moved, and how long he can stay there.

Something plunges through her, streaming out in her wake as she shuts the door and leaves her father on the bed.”
― Lydia Davis, Samuel Johnson Is Indignant

“Queer,’ said Hilary, and then, 'But at least the Occupation showed each man what he was capable of. Don't you think it was something to be able to find that out?'

'No, why?' said Pierre. 'Some found they were better than they thought, some worse. We are finding that out all the time in our everyday lives.”
― Marghanita Laski, Little Boy Lost

“For all his formidable self-confidence, he harboured doubts about the person he was at heart, and sometimes questioned whether he had a heart at all. Iris Caldwell, his girlfriend from Liverpool, recalled that her mother had accused him of being emotionally cold. It ate at him: years later, just before the release of 'Yesterday', Paul called Iris and said her mother should listen to Yesterday to see if it changed her mind. In an interview in the 1980s, he brought up the moment when he heard about his mother's death (‘What are we going to do for money?’), and said, ‘I’ve never forgiven myself for that. Really, deep down, I never have quite forgiven myself for that.’ As he danced through a Beatle life in which every door seemed to open the moment he touched it, he retained, in his mind, the baleful image of himself he drew as a teenager: a face that scowled rather than smiled. He once described his public self as 'pleasantly insincere’. He was drawn to those who saw through his masks and loved him nonetheless. Being accepted by John confirmed to him that he was special. Being loved by Linda, and by Heather, convinced him he was good.”
― Ian Leslie, John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs

“In October, Yoko and John celebrated John's thirty-first birthday with friends, including Ringo, in a hotel room in Syracuse, New York, where Yoko had an exhibition. There is a tape of a rowdy singalong, led by John on an out-of-tune guitar. It includes a slightly drunk and maudlin rendition of 'Yesterday'. John gets the words wrong (‘now it looks as though I've lost my way'), and replaces ‘she’ with ‘he’: why he had to go, I don't know, he wouldn't say...”
― Ian Leslie, John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs