Yan’s Reviews > Near to the Wild Heart > Status Update

“All she knew how to do was live.”

“I must not forget, I thought, that I have been happy, that I am being happier than one can be. But I forgot, I’ve always forgotten.”

“She couldn’t fool herself because she knew she was also living, and that those moments were the peak of something difficult, of a painful experience for which she should be thankful: almost as if she were feeling time outside herself, in a detached manner.”

“Besides: how could she tie herself to a man without allowing him to imprison her? How could she prevent him from developing his four walls over her body and soul? And was there a way to have things without those things possessing her?”

“That is to say, I know it all too well, but I can’t say it. More than anything, I’m afraid to say it, because the moment I try to speak, not only do I fail to express what I feel but what I feel slowly becomes what I say. Or at least what makes me act is not what I feel but what I say.”

“Maybe it was just a lack of life: she was living less than she could and imagined that her thirst required floods.”