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“10-16-13
I, soaking in the bath, O on the toilet, talking, talking about what he's been thinking and writing- short personal pieces, a memoir perhaps. He had brought with him two pillows to sit on and a very large red apple. He opens his mouth wide and takes a gigantic bite. I watch him chewing for quite a while. After he finishes, 'Bite me off a piece', I say. He does so, dislodges the apple from his mouth, and puts the piece in my mouth. We keep talking. I add more hot water. Every other bite, he gives to me.
There is a quiet moment, and then, seemingly apropos of nothing, O says: 'I am glad to be on planet Earth with you. It would be so much lonelier otherwise.'
I reach for his hand and hold it,
'I, too,' I say.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“2-1-10:
A languid Sunday, afternoon turned into evening, evening into night, night into morning.
'I just want to enjoy your nextness and nearness,' O says.
He puts his ear to my chest and listens to my heart and counts the beats.
'Sixty-two,' he says with a satisfied smile, and I can't imagine anything more intimate.”
― Bill Hayes, Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

“O Lord I cannot bear the thought of Philip lying still in such a place as this and when that thought arises must hum some scrap of tune energetically while praying No no no take that cup away Lord let me go first before any of them I love (before Philip Mary Jack Jr before dear Lydia) only that’s no good either since when they reach their end I will not be there to help them?”
― George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

“His mind was freshly inclined to sorrow; toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in the world one must try to remember that all were suffering (non content all wronged, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact; that his current state of sorrow was not uniquely his, not at all, but rather, its like had been felt, would yet be felt, by scores of others in all times, in every time, and must not be prolonged or exaggerated, because, in this state, he could be of no help to anyone, and given that his position in the world situated him to be either of great help or great harm, it would not do to stay low, if he could help it.

All were in sorrow, or had been, or soon would be.

It was the nature of things.

Though on the surface is seemed every person was different, this was not true.

At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end; the many loses we must experience on the way to that end.

We must try to see one another in this way.

As suffering limited beings-

Perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces.

His sympathy extended to all in this instant, blundering in its strict logic, across all divides.”
― George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo