Farah > Recent Status Updates

"It is the secret fear that we are unlovable that isolates us," the passage goes, "but it is only because we are isolated that we think we are unlovable. Someday, you do not know when, you will be driving down a road. And someday, you do not know when, he, or indeed she, will be there. You will be loved because for the first time in your life, you will truly not be alone. You will have chosen to not be alone."

"A good marriage is, at least, one part conspiracy."

That spring, while waiting for a Greyhound bus, A.J. says to Amelia, "You couldn't even get to Alice three months of the year."
"It would have been easier for me to commute to Afghanistan," she says. "I like how you bring this up at the bus station, by the way."

"The first time I saw you, I thought you looked like a dandelion."
She pats her hair self-consciously. "My hair's such a pain."
"It's my favorite flower."
"I think it's actually a weed," she says.
"You're rather stunning, you know."
"They used to call me Big Bird in school."
"I'm sorry."

"... It's kind of like if a shrimp cocktail decided to make love to a Bloody Mary."

Some children are left in shoe stores. And some children are left in toy stores. And some children are left in sandwich shops. And your whole life is determined by what store you get left it.

She toddles across the stores, past the books that don't have pictures in them, past the greeting cards. She runs her hand across the magazines, gives the rotating stand with the bookmarks a spin. Good morning, magazines! Good morning, bookmarks! Good morning, books! Good morning, store!

And then, despite the fact that A.J. does not believe in God, he closes his eyes and thanks whomever, the higher power, with all his porcupine heart.

The most annoying thing about it (love) is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about everything.

A.J. watches Mayan in her pink party dress, and he feels a vaguely familiar, slightly intolerable bubbling inside of him. He wants to laugh out loud or punch a wall. He feels drunk or at least carbonated. Insane. At first, he thinks this is happiness, but then he determines it's love. Fucking love, he thinks. What a bother.

In April, the Paris Wife. In June, A Reliable Wife. In August, American Wife. In September, The Time Traveler's Wife. In December, he runs out of decent books with wife in the title. They read Bel Canto.

She was pretty and smart, which makes her death a tragedy. She was poor and black, which means people say they saw it coming.

"Problems, Mr. Fikry. To begin, it is narrated by Death! I am an eighty-two-year-old woman and I do not find it one bit pleasurable to read a five-hundred-fifty-two-page tome narrated by Death. I think it is a remarkably insensitive choice."
A.J. apologizes but he is not sorry. Who are these people who think a book comes with a guarantee that they will like it?

"... Between you and me, for a time in the early oughties, we'd given up on competition. I thought it was a mistake, but my board decided that competition was best left to Olympic athletes, kids in spelling bees, and cereal manufacturers. These days, I'm glad to report that we at Island Books are definitely in the competition business once again. The store's closed, by the way." A.J. points toward the exit.

".... I'm sorry about before I referred to you as an 'unimportant supporting character.' That was rude and for all we know, I am the 'unimportant supporting character' in the grander saga of Officer Lambiase. A cop is a more likely protagonist than a bookseller. You, sir, is a genre."

The difficulty of living alone is that any mess he makes he is forced to clean up himself.
No, the real difficulty of living alone is that no one cares if you are upset.

She is thirty-one years old and she thinks she should have met someone by now.
And yet ...
Amelia the bright-sider believes it is better to be alone than to be with someone who doesn't share your sensibilities and interest. (It is, right?)

As soon as I hear the water start I do something I haven't done for a very long time, I cry. Deep and painful, like I'm a child again. I fall asleep before Cat is out of the shower. When I wake up I'm in hospital and the next time I see Cat is the first time I meet her, in a rehabilitation centre that I call home, where she is visiting a friend.

Maybe I should leave, but if I haven't learned anything else from today, I've learned that I'm my father's daughter. I stay.

Maybe I should leave, but if I haven't learned anything else from today, I've learned that I'm my father's daughter. I stay.

When a member of the family leaves or dies, it changes the dynamics of a family. People move and shift, take up places they either wanted to have or are forced into roles they never wanted. It happens without anybody noticing, but it's shifting all the time.

..and when you're dead you'd think you'd want to just enjoy being dead without having to worry about the people you left behind. Worrying is for the living.

So many secrets, so many things I didn't know. What else don't I know?
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There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently.
- Robert Evans.

I have a knack for remembering things that people forget and I now know something important about Dad that he kept to himself, which he has forgotten.
Things we want to forget, things we can't forget, things we forgot we'd forgotten until we remember them.
There is a new category. We all have things we never want to forget. We all need a person to remember them just in case.

One thing I learned about carrying marbles in my pockets in case Father Murphy locked me in the dark room, and going out with Hamish and pretending to other kids that I've never played marbles before, is that keeping secrets makes me feel powerful.

My mother says that I have a knack for remembering what others forget. Sometimes it's a curse; nobody likes it when there's somebody to remember what they've tried so hard to bury. I'm like the person who remembers everything after a drunken night out, who everyone wishes would keep their memories to themself.

When it comes to my memory there are three categories: things I want to forget, things I can't forget, and things I forgot I'd forgotten until I remember them.

We are immortal in the dreams of our loved ones. And our dead live on after their deaths in our dreams. Dreams are the interface between the worlds, between time and space.

All of us preserve time. We preserve the old versions of the people who have left us. And under our skin, under the layer of wrinkles and experience and laughter, we, too, are old versions of ourselves. Directly below the surface, we are our former selves: the former child, the former lover, the former daughter.

I want him. I want you. I want the north and the south. I want life with all it involves. I've opted against the "or" and for the "and".