Maylan Murray

“He behaved as if old friendship was one of the markers by which he set his watch.”
― Andrew O'Hagan, On Friendship

“I was on a panel a few years ago with a philosopher who'd written a book on time. She said there were two prevailing theories, eternalism and presentism. Eternalism is the belief that everything that is, has been, and will be exists right now and forever, all at once. Presentism is the belief that only what exists in the present exists at all. Nothing before and nothing after. No exceptions. As we were walking off stage I asked her which she believed, and she told me she could make a strong case for either, but recently she was leaning toward presentism.
I didn't understand why she would lean toward presentism, why she would choose only the present moment — no past, no future — when she could have everything all at once for eternity. But standing here in line, with all these good people working to help others get better, it feels okay to me to have this moment and nothing else. It feels vast, open, beautiful. Only this right here right now. I feel happy. I have told him.”
― Lily King, Heart the Lover

“It has happened only three or four times to me, when an offence seemed so extreme, a disloyalty so complete, that there was no choice but to end the friendship and move on. We friendship fans have an obvious vice, which is to set the bar too high, unwittingly laying a trap for those who are much more casual about what friendship involves. Falling out is as much my fault as theirs, because those poor friends flunked an exam they didn't even know they were sitting. For some people who key your name and number into their phone and call you their bestie, the rules of mutualism are cold – they use you and you use them, until someone better comes along and you fade into the matrix of spent feelings. But I can't do that. I can't play at comradeship. I can't do one-night stands or holiday romances. I can shake someone's hand and do pleasantries and enjoy passing the time, but they're not my friends in any real sense. Acquaintances are fine but they mean less to me than my postman, who is a friend. He's good to me. I'm good to him. And we appear to share the principle that life is too short for bad friendships.”
― Andrew O'Hagan, On Friendship

“We can and should trust novelists when they tell us the beautiful lies of their fiction.”
― Julian Barnes, Departure[s]