Sevi’s Reviews > The Passion > Status Update

My mother who took me on her breast and whispered the scripture in my ear. She hoped I’d learn it that way, but I heard nothing except the fire spitting and the steam rising from the water she heated for my father’s wash. I heard nothing but her heart and felt nothing but her softness.

You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play.
The end of every game is an anti-climax. What you thought you would feel you don’t feel, what you thought was so important isn’t any more. It’s the game that’s exciting.
And if you win?
There’s no such thing as a limited victory. You must protect what you have won. You must take it seriously.

Do all lovers feel helpless and valiant in the presence of the beloved? Helpless because the need to roll over like a pet dog is never far away. Valiant because you know you would slay a dragon with a pocket knife if you had to.

I didn’t know what hate felt like, not the hate that comes after love. It’s huge and desperate and it longs to be proved wrong. And every day it’s proved right it grows a little more monstrous. If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed and beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once loved, it’s for yourself too;

She buried my head in her hair and I became her creature. Her smell, my atmosphere, and later when I was alone I cursed my nostrils for breathing the everyday air and emptying my body of her.

Passion is not so much an emotion as a destiny. What choice have I in the face of this wind but to put up sail and rest my oars?

...the women looked at the earth and said they knew when they were being watched. The Bishop had taken them seriously, not because he believed the talk about Patrick’s eye, but preferring the smooth shapes of his choirboys he found the affair exceedingly repulsive.

St Paul said it is better to marry than to burn, but my mother taught me it is better to burn than to marry.

Odd to be so governed by an appetite.