rrafa’s Reviews > A Little Life > Status Update

(p. 784) 'He feels, as he increasingly does, that his life is something that has happened to him, rather than something he has had any role in creating'

(p. 750) 'the color of the sea from which one comes, the color of the sea to which one returns'

'and the blood from his nose was thick and hot and reassuring and the taste of it on his lips oddly nourishing, like soup, as if his body were something miraculous and self-healing, determined to save itself.'

"Pretend we're falling and we're clinging together from fear."

Finally

' "Well, the hardest thing about being a parent is recalibration. The better you are at it, the better you will be."
(...) We all say we want our kids to be happy, only happy, and healthy, but we don't want that. We want them to be like we are, or better than we are. We as humans are very unimaginative in that sense.'

"Why wasn't friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn't it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified."