Here One Moment

by Liane Moriarty

We were young, so we took ourselves seriously.

The idea of determinism, he said, is that everything that happens, and every decision or action you make, is “causally inevitable.” Why? Because everything is caused by something else: a preceding action, event, or situation.

Suddenly she gets it: Max is trying to convince her not to be upset because he’s upset.

he cannot bear it when there is something to worry about but nothing to be done, no way to fix it.

Symptoms often mean nothing because they are not, in fact, symptoms, they are just the normal niggles and quibbles of being alive.