CJ’s Reviews > Intermezzo > Status Update

“What can life be made to accommodate, what can one life hold inside itself without breaking.”

“What has not yet been lost, what still at least for this moment remains. To do what little good he can with his life. To ask for nothing more, to bow his head, pitifully grateful, God's humble and grateful servant. Can he imagine anything less like himself? And yet here he is, defeated, relieved, forgiving everything, praying only to be forgiven.”

“To be loved, yes, for no reason, with no imaginable reward.”

“Remained inside him, trapped, festering, turning into something stranger and worse. Proliferation of inappropriate attachments. Holding hard, harder, clutching, not letting go. Well, if that's suffering, he thinks, let me suffer. Let me suffer, please. To love just these few people, to know myself capable of that, I would suffer every day of my life.”

“Attachment, the cause of all suffering, so the Buddhists say. To cling to what you have, what you have had, the life you have known, the handful of people and places you have ever really loved, to cling and not let go. Never relenting, never accepting, becoming all the time more enmeshed, holding harder, loving and hating more.”

“Difficulties, certain problems to be negotiated, but isn't that what it means to love someone?”

“The demands of other people do not dissolve; they only multiply. More and more complex, more difficult. Which is another way of saying: more life, more and more of life.”

“Human beings, flawed, okay, but not literally evil. Yes, the world makes room for goodness and decency, he thinks: and the task of life is to show goodness to others, not to complain about their failings.”

“Life itself, every moment of life is as precious beautiful as any game of chess ever played, if only you know how to live.”

“Doesn't the feeling between people have a truth of its own?”