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He hadn't noticed the stars coming out; millions of them now, watching, he thought, or waiting for us to join them.
They all started like this, empty cups that thought they weren't. And some never got filled at all. And others, like Amy, came already whole, just lying there in the sand like works of art for bastards like him to come along and pick up and collect.
“Happy people are just miserable people you don't know well enough,”
That's a good thing, he thinks. To hold someone's hand in yours and know theirs is just as cold; to know a person by common imperfections.
He pours them both a cup of coffee and they watch the morning, the cars passing, London starting up like a tired old engine. “The morning's better when you've come the long way around,” Lindsey says.
I knew it wouldn't work. I think I knew that from day one. But you bullshit yourself, don't you? You know the lady hasn't really been sawed in half but you don't want to spoil the trick so you just keep quiet.
God, I miss you, he thinks. When it was good I felt like I could drink oceans and shit fire. And when it was bad I felt like I didn’t want to live. My life had a keel. I never minded the things you think I minded: your obsession with horses, with wine, with shitty pop music. You were wife material, mother material. You were a love letter to all good and proper English values: decency, practicality, personal efficacy, neighbourly kindness, moral virtue, sex with the lights off, brilliantly thought out Christmas presents, and goodness, and goodness, and goodness. Who are you fucking these days?
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No one is guaranteed happiness. It's not a human right. It's a house you have to build yourself. Your family and friends can help, but they're all busy building their own houses too. You're just bitter because you built a shit house.”
God, mornings are beautiful and I never watch them. I've never watched one before, not properly. Not like this.
We were simply destined to grow old, or older, together, and for our miseries to compound, until our wills grew greyer than our hair.
The world had a perfect sheen to it and I don’t know quite when that sheen wore off – if it happened in the space of a single day, or over the course of a year – but now it was gone and I had barely any memory of its brightness in the first place.
Some saint I could not remember the name of had said that simplicity in all things was a virtue and that seemed a very wise thing to say.
Death is the Great Motivator, the Perpetual Kick, the Coming of the Candle Snuffer.
“Time, like death, is the limitation on all things. But unlike death, it is little more than illusion.
“Choice is the capability of a man to change his own fate if he so desires. But little does he ever.
“Courage isn't the absence of fear but the mastery of it.”
