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But things have suddenly changed. My peaceful existence in Gentilly has been complicated. This morning, for the first time in years, there occurred to me the possibility of a search.
What is the nature of the search? you ask. Really it is very simple, at least for a fellow like me; so simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. This morning, for example, I felt as if I had come to myself on a strange island. And what does such a castaway do? Why, he pokes around the neighborhood and he doesn’t miss a trick. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair. The movies are onto the search, but they screw it up. The
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She had not known what was wrong nor how it was righted but she knows now that all is well.
He wasn’t there but on his bed lay a well-thumbed volume put out by the Rosicrucians called How to Harness Your Secret Powers. The poor bastard.
“She is afraid of a general catastrophe.
Uncle Jules is the only man I know whose victory in the world is total and unqualified. He has made a great deal of money, he has a great many friends, he was Rex of Mardi Gras, he gives freely of himself and his money. He is an exemplary Catholic, but it is hard to know why he takes the trouble. For the world he lives in, the City of Man, is so pleasant that the City of God must hold little in store for him.
“Good day,” says Kate irritably.
My aunt is convinced I have a “flair for research.” This is not true. If I had a flair for research, I would be doing research.
She sounds better but she is not. She is trapping herself, this time by being my buddy, best of all buddies and most privy to my little researches. In spite of everything she finds herself, even now, playing out the role. In her long nightmare, this our old friendship now itself falls victim to the grisly transmogrification by which she unfailingly turns everything she touches to horror.
Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.
Beauty and bravery make you sad, Sharon’s beauty and my aunt’s bravery, and victory breaks your heart.
THREE O’CLOCK and suddenly awake amid the smell of dreams and of the years come back and peopled and blown away again like smoke.
“Yes. But envy is not merely sorrow at another’s good fortune: it is also joy at another’s misfortune.”
Losing hope is not so bad. There’s something worse: losing hope and hiding it from yourself.”
He has just begun to suffer from it, this miserable trick the romantic plays upon himself: of setting just beyond his reach the very thing he prizes.
“Discovery that someone in whom you had placed great hopes was suddenly not there.
the wire thrills and stops and thrills and in the interval there comes into my ear my own breath as if my very self stood beside me and would not speak.
“I am frightened when I am alone and I am frightened when I am with people. The only time I’m not frightened is when I’m with you.
