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Kindle Notes & Highlights
The dreadful gulf between thought and words, will and expression, reality and unreality, and the things that flourish in that gulf, are what this story is about.
The brain knows no tenses. If it has longed for something, it has already had it. The leap comes when we do not want to lose the future we have already known.
Hugo never followed up anything Ester said. Ester always followed up what Hugo said. Neither of them was really interested in her but they were both interested in him.
The fact was that she shunned ennui, always had done. She would rather endure torment than tedium, would rather be alone than in a group of people making small talk. Not because she disliked the small-talkers, but because they absorbed too much energy. Small talk drained her. Perhaps, she debated with herself, she had engineered falling in love with Hugo because she had imperceptibly grown bored and needed this anxiety intermingled with hope and a bliss that was absolute, in order to feel alive.
the dissatisfaction of rising expectations, a psychological law of nature. You got what you had been lacking and were grateful for a brief moment. But you soon adjusted to it, considered it the norm and started to view it as a minimum standard. Your expectations grew and it took more and more to produce the feeling of satisfaction. Running water, nutritious food, a car and more spacious housing were not enough. Bigger, more sweeping reforms were needed to make you feel as good as you had before. The dose had to be higher and be administered more frequently.
She wanted him to ask: What shall we do today? What would you like us to do today? Not the rejection of: What are you doing today?
