Ando Johnson’s Reviews > Celestial Lights > Status Update

“Perhaps our whole lives were just a series of letting go - of certain values and beliefs, of people and memories. We let go of certain things, quietly or with a thud, in the hope of reaching greater, better ones, while the rest wilts away.”

“All of these things, which had once been my entire world, the village and my father, toys and my books, becoming fainter and smaller until I could barely see them, like stars whose light could no longer reach me. And I thought that the only way to make sense of this fall, the only way to assign value to it, was for wherever I ended up to be astonishing in its brightness.”

“I want to be with someone whose absence I feel.”

“There’s nothing lonelier than that feeling, of trying to love someone, without managing to.”

“That urge I had in London, to work out who I was without any anchors, without anyone who reminded me of home. I wanted to be in a place empty of anyone able to show me my reflection, so that I could forge it myself.”