Status Updates From Slow Man

"What do we call it when someone knows the worst
about us, the worst and most wounding, and does not come out with it but
on the contrary suppresses it and continues to smile on us and make little
jokes? We call it affection. Where else in the world, at this late stage, are
you going to find affection, you ugly old man? "

'I learned a lesson from it: that love need not be
reciprocated as long as there is enough of it in the room. This girl had
enough love for two. You are the writer, the heart expert, but did you know
that? If you love deeply enough, it is not necessary to be loved back.’

‘Everything in the world was, once upon a
time, new. Even I was new. The hour I was born I was the latest, newest
thing on the face of the earth. Then time got to work on me. As time will get
to work on you. Time will eat you up, Drago. One day you will be sitting in
your nice new house with your nice new wife, and your son will turn
around to the pair of you and say, Why are you so old-fashioned? .’

‘Everything in the world was, once upon a
time, new. Even I was new. The hour I was born I was the latest, newest
thing on the face of the earth. Then time got to work on me. As time will get
to work on you. Time will eat you up, Drago. One day you will be sitting in
your nice new house with your nice new wife, and your son will turn
around to the pair of you and say, Why are you so old-fashioned? .’

"I have been overtaken by time, by history. This flat, and
everything in it, has been overtaken. There is nothing strange in that – in
being overtaken by time. It will happen to you too, if you live long enough."

"Truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if
it ever comes to be spoken, in love. The gaze of love is not deluded. Love
sees what is best in the beloved, even when what is best in the beloved finds
it hard to emerge into the light. "

"I can’t begin to tell you how tired I
am. And not with the kind of tiredness that can be fixed by a good night’s
sleep in a proper bed. The tiredness I refer to has become part of my being.
It is like a dye that has begun to seep into everything I do, everything I say.
I feel, to use Homer’s word, unstrung."

"We are who we are, Paul. This, for the time
being, is the life we are given to live, and we must live it. When I am with
you I am at home; when I am not with you I am homeless. That is how the
dice have fallen. Are you surprised to hear me say so? You should not be. "

''We do not need love, old people like us. What we need is care: someone
to hold our hand now and then when we get trembly, to make a cup of tea
for us, help us down the stairs. Someone to close our eyes for us when the
time comes. Care is not love. Care is a service that any nurse worth her salt
can provide, as long as we don’t ask her for more.’'

‘Of course you may love whom you choose. But maybe from now on
you should keep your love to yourself, as one keeps a head cold to oneself,
or an attack of herpes, out of consideration for one’s neighbours.

"Whether he is wrong or right,whether what in the most hesitant of
spirits he calls the other side is truth or delusion,the first epithet that occurs
to him,typed out letter by letter behind his eyelids by the celestial
typewriter, is puny. If dying turns out to be nothing but a trick that might as
well be a trick with words, if death is a mere hiccup in time after which life
goes on as before,why all the fuss?"

"If he reads back far enough, it will no doubt become clearer who the
grieving woman is, whose the corpse. But the imp of curiosity seems to be
deserting him. He is not sure he wants to know more. Something unseemly
about this writing, the fat ink sprawling carelessly over the tramlines;
something impious, provocative, uncovering what does not belong in the
light of day."

"The years go by as quickly as a wink. So enjoy
yourself while you’re still in the pink. It’s always later than you think."

"He has many regrets, he is full of regrets, they come back nightly like
roosting birds. "

"A leg
gone: what is losing a leg, in the larger perspective? In the larger
perspective, losing a leg is no more than a rehearsal for losing everything.
Whom is he going to shout at when that day arrives? Whom is he going to
blame?"

"The clock stands still yet time does not. Even as he lies here he can feel
time at work on him like a wasting disease, like the quicklime they pour on
corpses. Time is gnawing away at him, devouring one by one the cells that
make him up. His cells are going out like lights."

Despite being my favorite author of 2025 "Disgrace " remains his lone 5 star from me, may this change that.