Arleen

“What we miss - what we lose and what we mourn - isn't it this that makes us who, deep down, we truly are. To say nothing of what we wanted in life but never got to have.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

“Sure I worried that writing about it might be a mistake. You write a thing down because you're hoping to get a hold on it. You write about experiences partly to understand what they mean, partly not to lose them to time. To oblivion. But there's always the danger of the opposite happening. Losing the memory of the experience itself to the memory of writing about it. Like people whose memories of places they've traveled to are in fact only memories of the pictures they took there. In the end, writing and photography probably destroy more of the past than they ever preserve of it. So it could happen: by writing about someone lost - or even just talking too much about them - you might be burying them for good.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

“If we could talk to animals, goes the song.
Meaning, if they could talk to us.
But of course that would ruin everything.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

“I know this is all moronically anthropomorphic, but sometimes that is the form love takes.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend