Quicksand

by Malin Persson Giolito

I read somewhere that “the truth is whatever we choose to believe.” Which sounds even more insane, if that’s even possible. Like someone can just decide what’s true and what’s false? Things can be both true and made up, depending on whom you ask? And if someone we trust says something, well, then we can just decide that it’s so, we can “choose that it’s true.”

My mom does not have sufficient interest in me to succeed in giving me a compliment that’s actually accurate.

I’m smart enough to realize how pointless it is to be smart, how little it means, and that it’s a liability.

minds about which story best matches their beliefs. People aren’t interested in what others say or think, what they have gone through, what conclusions they have drawn. People are interested in hearing only what they think they already know.

Maybe good fortune is like misfortune in the sense that it takes a while for realization to set in. At first you feel nothing. The feelings come later, perhaps not until the reason for them is long gone.

There are words that can be felt throughout your whole body. Words can spark a feeling that belongs to a different part of the brain than you expect. Good words feel warm. My mom’s whispered “shhh…” when I was little and had trouble sleeping (“My little girl, shhh…sleep now, darling…”). Or Dad’s tone of voice when he called “Maja!” and you could hear how he wanted everyone to know that I was his girl, that we belonged together, him and me. And Grandma’s voice when she was reading a story (“Once upon a time…”). Sebastian’s “I love you,” just as he fell asleep, at the tail end of a breath.

Superstition is no cure for reality. Hypochondriacs contract fatal diseases at the same rate as everyone else.

Things aren’t more real just because they’re ugly.

Love? No, I don’t miss love. Love is not greatest or purest, it’s never a perfect blend, just an impure liquid, the kind you should really sniff before you taste. But the risk is you still might not notice it’s poisonous.

I don’t believe in coincidence. I don’t believe in God either. What I do believe is that everything that happens is connected to whatever happened before, like links in a chain. Is it predetermined? No. How could it be? But that’s not the same as saying that something just happened. The law of gravity isn’t random. Water heats up and becomes condensation. That’s not random, nor is it proof of divine justice. It just is.