Ilse’s Reviews > Outline > Status Update
Ilse
is on page 206 of 249
She remembered a piece of music by Olivier Messiaen, written during his internment in a prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War. Some of it was based, or so she had understood, on the patterns of birdsong he had heard around him while under detention there. It struck her that the man was caged while the birds were free, and that what he had written down was the sound of their freedom.
— Aug 15, 2025 03:42AM
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Ilse’s Previous Updates
Ilse
is on page 218 of 249
I was suddenly filled with the most extraordinary sense of existence as a secret pain, an inner torment it was impossible to share with others, who asked you to attend to them while remaining oblivious to what was inside you, like the mermaid in the fairy story who walks on the knives that on one else can see.
— Aug 18, 2025 04:00AM
Ilse
is on page 164 of 249
At the wedding, asked by friends what it was she saw in him - a pertinent enough question, he conceded, at the time - she had replied, I find him interesting.
I said that it didn't sound such a bad reason to marry someone.
— Aug 13, 2025 09:31AM
I said that it didn't sound such a bad reason to marry someone.
Ilse
is on page 160 of 249
It is interesting how keen people are for you to do something they would never dream of doing themselves, how enthusiastically they drive ou to your own destruction. Perhaps we are all like animals in the zoo, and once we see that one of us has got out of the enclosure we shout at him to run like mad, even though it will only result in him becoming lost.
— Aug 11, 2025 05:45AM
Ilse
is on page 150 of 249
‘Music’, she said, in a langerous and dreamlike manner. ‘Music is a betrayer of secrets, it is more treacherous even than dreams, which at least have the virtue of being private’.
— Aug 09, 2025 02:35AM
Ilse
is on page 124 of 249
Children leave or children stay depending on their ambitions: their lives are their own. Somehow we become convinced that if we say even a word out of place we’ve marked them forever, but of course that is ridiculous, and in any case, why should their lives be perfect? It is our own idea of perfection that plagues us, and it is rooted in our own desires.
— Aug 07, 2025 03:28AM
Ilse
is on page 113 of 249
When she does see women wearing such shoes, it makes her feel sad. She had believed, until now, that this was because she found such women pitiful, but in fact when she thinks about it honestly it is because she feels excluded or disbarred from the concept of womanhood the shoes represent. She feels, almost, as if she isn't a woman at all. But if she isn't a woman, what is she?
— Aug 06, 2025 09:36AM
Ilse
is on page 105 of 249
I wasn't sure it was possible, in marriage, to know what you actually were, or indeed to separate what you were from what you had become through the other person. I thought the whole idea of a 'real' self might be illusory: you might feel, in other words, as though there were some separate, autonomous self within you, but perhaps that self didn't actually exist.
— Aug 04, 2025 08:57AM
Ilse
is on page 83 of 249
There was no such thing as an unblemished childhood, though people will do everything they can to convince you otherwise. There was no such things as a life without pain.
— Aug 02, 2025 02:46AM
Ilse
is on page 73 of 249
I felt that I could swim for miles, out into the ocean: a desire for freedom, an impulse to move, tugged at me as though it were a thread fastened to my chest. It was an impulse I knew well, and I had learned that it was not the summons from a larger world I used to believe it to be. It was simply a desire to escape from what I had.
— Jul 27, 2025 08:28AM
Ilse
is on page 41 of 249
What Ryan had learned from this is that your failures keep returning to you, while your successes are something you always have to convince yourself of.
— Jul 26, 2025 05:18AM
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Fred
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Aug 15, 2025 07:45AM
The quote reminds of something the late irmis Popoff told a friend of mine who was studying with her: "You can listen to the birds singing outside the window or the sound of the toilet running; it's your choice."
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Fred wrote: "The quote reminds of something the late irmis Popoff told a friend of mine who was studying with her: "You can listen to the birds singing outside the window or the sound of the toilet running; it'..."Wise words, thank you very much for sharing them, Fred - a reflection that I’ll bear in mind when the never-ending building works in the street make me desperate and long for silence - I can choose to ignore the noise and listen to the pigeons in the garden instead!
Caterina wrote: "I love this so much!"Caterina, please do read this book, you will definitely enjoy it! I have to refrain not to post quotations from every other page ;). Messiaen’s internment also features in Luis Sagasti’s fine A Musical Offering, but Cusk’s brilliant reflection on his music is so astute and insightful it made me float from joy.
Ilse wrote: "Caterina wrote: "I love this so much!"Caterina, please do read this book, you will definitely enjoy it! I have to refrain not to post quotations from every other page ;). Messiaen’s internment als..."
I do want to read it now!!! Hearing that it made you float from joy!
![Terence M - [Quot libros, quam breve tempus!]](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1712357414p1/6658001.jpg)
I love the Irmis Popoff quote almost as much as I love the cover!
Caterina wrote: "I do want to read it now!!! Hearing that it made you float from joy!Super, I really hope you'll enjoy it as much as I do, Caterina! So far this trilogy resonates far more with me than what I previously read of Rachel Cusk (essays, and Parade - which was fascinating enough, pivoting around the artist and creativity, but also pretty cold - and harder to grasp even if there are parallels with the style of the Outline trilogy.
Terence M - [Quot libros, quam breve tempus!] wrote: "I love the Irmis Popoff quote almost as much as I love the cover!"It is a very good one, isn't it, Terence? I was happy to learn about her from Fred - apparently she was a great lover of cats too :).
I may hold off reading Parade then, Ilse. I loved this trilogy so much, and this center one most, but have found her nonfiction unpleasantly cold.
