Ktgrdn

“I worked hard to love you, to make you feel loved, to have the world love you. I became old instantly. I became imprisoned by love, by impatience, by impetuousness. It wasn’t easy; I hope you will find the shadows comforting, in the end. I wish I could be there to defend myself.”
― Makenna Goodman, The Shame

“Never again since had he been able to absorb himself; never again had he been able to believe in that way. Perhaps it was that - the loss of belief - that constituted his yearning for the old life. Whatever it was, he and his wife had built things that had flourished, had together expanded the sum of what they were and what they had; life had responded willingly to them, had treated them abundantly, and this - he now saw - was what had given him the confidence to break it all, break it with what now seemed to him to be an extraordinary casualness, because he thought there would be more.

More what? I asked.

“More life” - he said, opening his hands in a gesture of receipt. “And more affection” he added, after a pause. “I wanted more affection.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline