We All Live Here

by Jojo Moyes

You can feel fondness, irritation, lust, gratitude all in the same half-hour. The trick is to understand this process, this ebb and flow, and not be panicked by your own emotions. Because as long as you’re both in this together, a team, you know deep in your bones that this is just part of the glorious business of being human. Dan

“Anyway. So when I was having my breakdown a guy I used to work with sent me a quote from Rilke: ‘Keep going. No feeling is final.’ Something along those lines. And I always think of that, when things are a bit rough. No feeling is final. The shitty times don’t last forever. Even if they feel like it.”

There are periods of your life in which all that is really required is to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

This is life at this age, she muses, a million goodbyes, and you never know which are the final ones. You just absorb them, like little shocks, trusting with each one that you’ll be able to keep moving forward.

Life is long and complicated, Lila, and we all make mistakes. What matters is what we do beyond them. But if you’re going to hold up your mother and your father as villains of the piece it will be misguided and it is ultimately you who will suffer.”

You can hang on to anger and bitterness your whole life. But all you really do is prolong your own pain. Just