Soph’s Reviews > Intermezzo > Status Update

“Because a living person has their own reality, he says. The person who's gone has no reality anymore, except in thoughts.
And once they're gone from thoughts, they actually are completely gone. If I don't think about him, literally, I'm ending his existence.”

‘His pulse is so fast and loud in his ears that he wonders for a second if it’s even audible on the other side of the call, or is that medically possible, to hear the sound of another person’s heartbeat on a phone call: probably not.’

‘Where did it come from, then, this word ‘passionate’? She knows where. From that so firmly suppressed feeling, present all along, that when he looks at her, when he speaks to her, he is addressing not only the superficial but also the deep concealed parts of her personality – without meaning to, without knowing how not to.’

‘Is the word ‘passionate’, or is it not, basically an obscene item of vocabulary? No, it isn’t. But is it like a small bandage placed over an item of vocabulary that is in fact obscene? Maybe, yes. A word with blood running through it, a red word. In casual conversation it’s better to use words that are grey or beige.’

‘The body is an insentient object, animated by a sentience it does not share, like an insentient car is animated by a sentient driver.‘

‘Just compare the two: the human mind […]; the human body heavy, […], making no sense at all. It just does things: no one knows why. It begins for some reason to attack itself or to proliferate cells where they don’t belong. No explanation. Does the mind do that? No. Well, in the case of mental illness, okay, sure, it can do similar things, but that’s different. Is it different? Anyway.’