Tapestry of Fortunes

by Elizabeth Berg

I despaired of ever finding true and lasting love. He said love only made sense in the context of it being in your own mind first, then given to others; that trying to force it never worked.

There is a jarring kind of brightness you experience coming out of a theater in the afternoon that I experience coming out of the Arms now. It has nothing to do with light, though. I get back in the car and the radio now feels like so much noise. I turn it off. This feeling I’m having now has to do with that, how I want back inside something I’ve just experienced: a silence that contains everything you want to hear.

We go into the library, that layman’s priory, that paper-scented oasis of quiet industry and calm.

one of the hardest things in life is fessing up to what you want most, because if you do that, and you don’t get it, it’s so hard to be without it. I wonder if most people fully invest in what they care about most.

“What’s the point in loving anything when it will just change or be taken away?” I asked. And she said, “The point in loving is only that. And when you lose something, you have to remember that then there is room for the next thing. And there is always a next thing,