The Red-Haired Woman

by Orhan Pamuk

it would soon go blurry again like a distant memory, coming and going of its own accord, in waves and shudders.

wondered in passing whether she realized somehow that the newfound “maturity” she observed was, in fact, a black stain on my soul.

A part of me was still strongly disposed to resent the very friends to whom we would have wanted to display our finery,

precisely because their existence encouraged us to do so.