- Like the sound of melted light.(4)
- ...but now and then I'd lose track of the time and realize I was having fun as well, quietly surprised that I was capable of such a thing.(9)
- ...spending every moment of my day, from morning ot night, hunting for mistakes.(5)
- I started laughing, in an odd way that betrayed the fact that I was used to living my life in a daze, without giving anything much thought.(10)
- ...a freshness I was sure I'd never known before spread slowly through my lungs, and I was filled with an awareness of the soft places inside me, spreading outward by degrees.(12)
- "Some writers are great, but not successful. Then you get other writers who are successful, but not so great. I'm sure there's some sort of special principle behind it. Then again, I guess there are things like that everywhere. We get this all the time as women, right? Like, if you make plenty of money but don't have any kids, you might get called successful. But unless you have kids, no one will ever call you a great woman. You know what I mean?"(15)
- "...They go around talking about seeing something big. As if everything they feel, everything they're thinking, is so big, bigger than all of us. That's what they do. They act like they're all big, ready to share their happiness with everyone, when the only happiness they care about is their own."(15)
- Being liked is wonderful and all, but that's not what life is about, you know? (18)
- ...my nostrils tickled with a smell that mixed the gentle end of spring with the intensity of summer. (21)
- Who has this much to say to people? (24)
- My ears made room for all the pleasant sounds around me. (26)
- If only those parted lips would tell me something, I knew that I would listen to them, whatever they might have to say, but no matter how I waited, no words came from anywhere. I became unsure of how to leave the mirror, how to leave the me in the mirror behind.(33)
- "...no matter what you're working on, you're not allowed to get lost in the text."(35)
- When I read, it's like I'm not actually reading, and when I'm done reading, I never feel like I can say I've actually read the thing. (36)
- I gazed into the thickness of the night, an inky substance that filled the space between that which moved and that which did not. (36)
- "...Maybe all of us forget, not just the proofreaders." (36)
- The night, as usual, was dotted here and there with different lights, which I watched without actually seeing them, letting each foot fall in front of the other. (37)
- ...coldness so profound that I could almost hear it... (37)
- Seen from behind, his back gave off a faint white glow, a sight that felt to me like a giant postcard, delivered to this moment from the winter. (37)
- "We can only see light when it reflects off something." "We can't see light on its own?" (45)
- This book argued that being loved is what makes a woman beautiful, meaning the more romance the better, and that romance is a resource that no one can put a price on, and sex provides a woman with more than just pleasure, significantly influencing the unavoidable experience of menopause for those ho have enjoyed a fulfilling sex life in their younger years. (40) ... As I walked home with my mind wandering, I thought about the books that I had looked through in the bookstore. It occurred to me that they were full of things that people wanted to say to other people, or things people wanted somebody to say to them.
- As I passed below the haloes of the green and red traffic signals, I was taken by this strange view of the evening, the city streets full of people -- people waiting, the people they were waiting for, people out to eat together, people going somewhere together, people heading home together. I allowed my thoughts to settle on the brightness filling their hears and lungs, squinting as I walked along and counted all the players of this game that I would never play. (41)
- These women had so many choices, and so many temptations, so many layers of coincidences and incidents, and the choices they made would change the color of their lives. They were surrounded by possibility.
- It was almost to the point where I was unsure there had even been a summer last year. (41)
- With every blink, I felt my feelings occupy more space, only to mellow as they grew. I was disoriented by an awareness of living through the very scene that I had been envisioning for nights on end before falling asleep. (42)
- "When I was a kid, it always felt like summer vacation lasted forever," I said, letting the words come out before I thought them over. (43)
- Looking out upon the bright white light of summer in the yard, I went into my room, and in no time, the whole world was blanketed in soft shadows, my little body, still the body of a child, lying motionless in the blue dark. The next thing I knew, the cicadas that had been buzzing all around me were scared away, and the weave of the tatami melted under my fingertips. I reached to catch it, but the outline of my body started to fade and an image I could never forget flashed through my heart.(43)
- When she sleeps, the lion's entire world is sleep. So she sleeps ... She gives herself to sleep ... And nothing else exists, not a single thought, only sleep It's as if when she's asleep, sleep and the world are one and the same.(44)
- Sometimes a memory jumps out at you, even though almost everything is lost forever. But what if all the things that we can't remember are actually the most important ones? (44)
- "So, putting it simply," I said, "the color htat we're seeing is whatever's left behind." (46)
- So the mistakes aren't there, until you find them..."(46)
- "Doesn't that wear you down a little? To keep looking for something you've decided is definitely there, when you can't really say for sure?"(46)
- but what's it mean to like somebody anyway? (49)
- what if my whole life was just a quote from something else, only I never realized it? (49)
- that feeling like none of this is mine, like it's just something I picked up somewhere, sometimes I start to think that maybe even thats something I ripped off. (49)
- Sadness and happiness are all experienced by someone else before us; we're simply following their lead.(60)
- ...things I never imagined I'd remember sprang up and multiplied like wildflowers, growing silently and with incredible speed, filling my eyes and ears and heart. (60)
- She may be an extreme example, but I guess, to some degree, all people have a deep-seated need to speak their minds and put their thoughts into words. (62)
- I became incredibly depressed when I realized that there was no truth at all in the words "We regret the things we don't do more than the things we do." (65)
- ...the melody was full of the qualities of light, as if pointing gently toward something, or guiding something along, each sound twinkling through the veil of darkness that surrounded me when I closed my eyes. In my chair, I surrendered myself to a world of sound that could only be described as sparkling. It made my head sway, and my breath grew deeper as my legs climbed up that evanescent staircase, each step a sheet of light. They would shimmer to life the second my sole made contact, then fizzle into stardust when I lifted my foot, only to be reborn as yet another step, gently showing me the way. That slowly winding spiral stairway of light ascended freely through the dark, and though I was unsure where it was taking me, or what I would find when I arrived, as long as the music was playing, I knew that there was nothing ot fear, that I could go anywhere at all. (68)
- I'd been on my own for ages, and I was convinced that there was no way I could be any more alone, but now I'd finally realized how alone I truly was. Despite the crowds of people, and all the different places, and a limitless supply of sounds and colors packed together, there was nothing here that I could reach out and touch. Nothing that would call my name. There never had been, and there never would be. And that would never change, no matter where I went in the world. Surrounded by the grayness of the city, every grayer in the misty rain, I was unable to move. (77)
- Even so, I continued to put this food that didn't matter into my body that didn't matter, which made everything seem to matter even less. (80)
- My head spins with a pleasure so intense it feels like I can barely hold it all inside, amazed that skin pressing against skin could feel this way, at how absorbing body heat --not with the fingers but with the full breadth of the belly or the back-- can make it feel as if you're sharing everything there is to share...(83)
- Overcome by how refreshing and soothing it is to stare into the eyes of somebody you feel this way about, to be this close to them, as if you're being remade from the deepest parts of you.... (83)
- My life is nowhere but here, and I am nowhere else. (83)
- It occurred to me that maybe I was where I was today because I hadn't chosen anything. (85)
- I was so scared of being hurt that I'd done nothing. I was so scared of failing, of being hurt, that I chose nothing. I did nothing. (86)
- My heart was bursting with these reawakened feelings, and before I knew it I was no longer able to speak. (87)
- I felt as if I was back inside the dream that I'd had so many times over the past month and a half. (87)
- When I was in the strong light of the morning or the day, I thought about it being midnight somewhere in the world, and thought about the people living there. People who spent their nights alone, alone through the night. (102)
- But the pain was already so far away. It was a pain taht existed in memory, growing weaker by the day, a pain I was forgetting and would soon lose entirely. I closed my eyes and imagined myself grasping at the individual sounds with my fingertips, as if marking time and memory itself. Once I'd followed the dreamlike flashing trail to its conclusion and the last sound had gone away, I slowly opened my eyes. (102)
- Steadying the spine of the notebook with my palm, I took the pencil to the first blank page and wrote the words: "All the lovers in the night." The phrase had appeared out of nowhere. Through the faint light of the room, I looked over the words, which came together in the strangest way. On the one hand, they felt new to me, like something I'd never heard or seen before, though I also felt like maybe... it had emerged from someplace inside of me. (102-103)
- Seeing my handwriting under the light, I realized this was the first time I'd written something without having a specific purpose, not a comment in somebody else's manuscript or galley, but my own words on a blank sheet of paper. I had no clue what to do with these words, no idea what they were for, or what they meant, but I stared at them and felt them reach my heart and linger there. (103)
aug 9 2023 ∞
aug 11 2023 +