Autumn (Seasonal, #1)

by Ali Smith

That’s the thing about things. They fall apart, always have, always will, it’s in their nature.

The more mundane truth was, he’d bought that postcard (Boubat! he took it) when he visited the city of love with yet another woman he wanted to love him but she didn’t,

Regrets when you’re dead? A past when you’re dead? Is there never any escaping the junkshop of the self?

The lifelong friends, he said. We sometimes wait a lifetime for them.

It is possible, he said, to be in love not with someone but with their eyes. I mean, with how eyes that aren’t yours let you see where you are, who you are.

We have to hope, Daniel was saying, that the people who love us and who know us a little bit will in the end have seen us truly. In the end, not much else matters.