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“He loved her for not only what she was but what she might be, the idea that she might be otherwise did not occur to him or did not matter. Why would it occur? When you love you see a future according to your dreams.”

“Everything happens, as far as you can tell, according to plan. The silence is as soothing as lanoline on a sore place. A twig falls. Birds pick at an Australian silence without tearing it apart. Except the kookaburra, which is either in league with humans, or else laughing at them.”

WANDERING

I ran away, hands stuck in pockets that seemed
All holes; my jacket was a holey ghost as well.
I followed you, Muse! Beneath your spell,
Oh, la, la, what glorious loves I dreamed!

I tore my shirt; I threw away my tie.
Dreamy Hop o’ my Thumb, I made rhymes
As I ran. I slept out most of the time.
The stars above me rustled through the sky.

“It was his eyes that surprised her. She had never looked into such pale eyes. They gave out nothing, like blind eyes, or old people with cataracts. Till they began shifting like shallow water, a thought or two scuttling through the shallows that he would rather have kept hidden from her, that he might have been afraid for her to know.”

“Why was the path to a woman so tortuous and mystifying, and why was he, with all his fame and strength, unable to traverse it, when so many men worse than him did? So many—yet only he, in his vigorous and laughable prime, for ever held out his arms as in a dream. What was it women were after?”

(from “The Journey Of Ali Djerzelez”)

“He would soon be in his sixties, and presently those cruel hardships he had endured would begin taking their toll; there would be ailments, illnesses, doctors, all the burdens that old age brings, and the irreversible awareness that money had come too late: instead of desire there would be pain, instead of appetite an aversion to food, instead of deep sleep lingering insomnia.”

“I saw myself as a composer, a miner, an officer, a labourer, a diplomat, a tramp: there was something convincing about each transformation, and so I began to believe that I really had no idea who I might be the very next day or what distance would separate me from this night after the darkness had passed. Where would I be and what awaited me? I had lived what seemed like so many different lives…”

“Well—I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how.”

“She was the golden thread running through everything, a lens that magnified beauty so that the whole world stood transfigured in relation to her, and her alone.”

“On cold mornings, that first white cloud of escaping breath is proof that we are living. Proof of our bodies’ warmth. Cold air rushes into dark lungs, soaks up the heat of our body and is exhaled as perceptible form, white flecked with grey. Our lives’ miraculous diffusion, out into the empty air.”

“Each moment is a leap forwards from the brink of an invisible cliff, where time’s keen edges are constantly renewed. We lift our foot from the solid ground of all our life lived thus far, and take that perilous step out into the empty air. Not because we claim any particular courage, but because there is no other way.”

“To her, every book was an account of her own life, and in reading she came to life; for the first time, she came out of her shell; she learned to talk about ‘herself’; and with each book she had more ideas on the subject. Little by little, I learned something about her.”

“I stepped back, to get a better look. It was a direct and matter-of-fact little creature, with nothing sentimental about it; and something about the neat, compact way it tucked down inside itself—its brightness, its alert watchful expression—made me think of pictures I’d seen of my mother when she was small: a dark-capped finch with steady eyes.”

“So my grandfather saved, until the inflation of the twenties ate up all his savings. Then he began to save again, not only by setting aside unneeded money but also and above all by compressing his own needs and demanding the same frugality of his children as well; his wife, being a woman, had never so much as dreamed that any other life was possible.”

“My emotional memory was immesurably richer and more potent than my rational one, but never was I able to delve as far back as my original feelings and learn what they were.”

“The windows have steamed up, so she gets a tissue out of her bag and wipes a patch clear. She watches the streaks of rain lashing the window, with the untouched steadiness unique to those accustomed to solitude.”

“Slowly, as though timing her movements to some music only she could hear, she bent her arms, legs and waist and rolled onto her side. He panned the camera down the ridge of her side and over the soft curve of her buttocks, then filmed first the flowers on her back, the flowers of night, and then the flowers of the sun on her front.”