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He was meditating on the generosity of friendship and on the feeling that one steps outside oneself in happiness for one’s friends.

“I’m just scared,” she said. “That’s all.”
“That isn’t all,” said Vincent. “What are you scared of?”
“I don’t know.”
“What else don’t you know?”


…

“Our trouble is that we don’t know how things are supposed to be anymore”

“In the evening, Vincent smoked his cigar and read at one end of the couch. Misty sipped her coffee and read at the other end. This was not romance as Vincent had ever known it. In fact, their first night together might have been viewed by ordinary lights as relatively unromantic. Vincent did not sweep Misty off her feet.

…

I do not want to get used to everything going well. I don’t want to get used to marriage. It’s too serious. I like daily life as much as the next person and I love daily life with you. We could go on and on quite happily but I think you have to interrupt things once in a while in order to get perspective.”

He lay in bed, hogging all the pillows and staring with relief at the sight of her full closet as she went to get a nightshirt. Cohabiting with only part of her wardrobe had been more of a strain on him than he had realized.

“She washed the dishes in silence and he dried them in silence, hunting around in her cabinets for the right places to put them. They stood side by side at the sink, which filled Vincent with contentment. This, he thought, is adult life and domesticity.”

She produced in Guido a violent longing, even when she was in the same room, as if he could never quite get enough of her. At times she appeared to him like a crystal of smoky quartz. You could see through it and into it. You gaped at its perfection. You looked it up to learn how it


...

Although by action she seemed to love him ardently, Holly did not seem to live in the realm of the emotions. She felt, she emoted, and she never gave it a second thought. The complexities of love and marriage were things she lived with and through, and that was that.

...

“He felt not unhappy, but lifeless and dismal. He did not feel lonely or wretched, but only pointless. He poured himself a glass of brandy and sat by the window. He was not, he realized, dying of love. He was simply lifeless without its object. What he felt about Holly was not obsession, but enrichment. Without Holly, his life was worth something, but not all that much.

…

“Guido pegged Holly as a strong domestic sensualist. She had a positive genius for comfort but he was only a visitor: that comfort had been created long before he met her.”

This is such a fun take on Pyrrhus’ story

“The whole world was before him and he was nobody in particular.”

Why is it making me anxious?

I need to indulge in something charming and witty

I’m not feeling it

End of part 5

“He was my friend—much more than that, truthfully—and that was enough. I didn’t need to know why.”

"How could we explain that standing on a stage and speaking someone else’s words as if they are your own is less an act of bravery than a desperate lunge at mutual understanding? An attempt to forge that tenuous link between speaker and listener and communicate something, anything, of substance."

Part four: done

“I thought how all of us are always trying to imagine what someone else is doing, eating our hearts out trying to find the truth and moving about in our own private worlds like a blind man who gropes for the walls and the various objects in a room.”

Part three: done

Part two: done

Part one: done

Finally starting the novel after 3 days of reading the introduction.

“Had I become so rich that I could neglect some of my possessions?”