Status Updates From Everything Will be Alright ...

Zoe looked back upon the ruins of the old life with astonishment at her innocence then; that she had really believed you could exempt yourself so easily from the grown-up burdens, as if you were children playing house.

Now that she had Pearl, this order of life - in which the material arrangements floated lightly on the periphery and knowledge and books and music were the real dense substance at the centre - was completely over-turned.

He made no separation between his life and his work. He reacted to books with a fierce partisanship as if writing was a matter as serious as life and death.

Fiona hadn't even been willing to exchange a few words with her; as though she suspected that Zoe's very desire for her friendship was something fake, something to show off, some deal Zoe was trying to make to get absolution for her own privilege, for university, for 'Cambridge', for arty parents and a big house.

Fiona hadn't even been willing to exchange a few words with her; as though she suspected that Zoe's very desire for her friendship was something fake, something to show off, some deal Zoe was trying to make to get absolution for her own privilege, for university, for 'Cambridge', for arty parents and a big house.

Fiona was very willing to be Zoe's friend; the only difficulty was that she was willing to be everybody's. Zoe was jealous, and persistent; she grabbed Fiona by the arm in a quick settling gesture of claim and possession…

If you touched them yourself, possessed them, put them on, might you not take on something of the superior substance and depth that the past had, in contrast to the shallow present? This active nostalgia, and an elegiac sense that the best things were gone, were Zoe's first strong abstract emotions.

Once she had come, through books mostly, to believe that there had really been other times in the past when things were done differently, she felt sure that the past must have been a better place. This was first and foremost an aesthetic judgement.

Once she had come, through books mostly, to believe that there had really been other times in the past when things were done differently, she felt sure that the past must have been a better place. This was first and foremost an aesthetic judgement.