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I would remember the view from the hospital window and be glad for the sidewalk I was walking on.
This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can’t possibly be true. But when I see others walking with confidence down the sidewalk, as though they are free completely from terror, I realize I don’t know how others are. So much of life seems speculation.
“She was an only child, I think that had something to do with it, how self-centered they can be.”
(O corn of my youth, you were my friend!—running and running between the rows, running as only a child, alone, in summer can run, running to that stark tree that stood in the midst of the cornfield—)
Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.
I loved New York for this gift of endless encounters.
And that’s what makes me sad, that a beautiful and true line comes to be used so often that it takes on the superficial sound of a bumper sticker.
It was the sound of my mother’s voice I most wanted; what she said didn’t matter.
I have said before: It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere, and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it’s the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.
And she said that her job as a writer of fiction was to report on the human condition, to tell us who we are and what we think and what we do.
I was terribly sad. I was as sad, really, as a sad child, and children can be very sad.
No one in this world comes from nothing.
A hotel room is a lonely place. Oh God it is a lonely place.
All life amazes me.
