The Friend

by Sigrid Nunez

Walking with Samuel Beckett one fine spring morning, a friend of his asked, Doesn’t a day like this make you glad to be alive? I wouldn’t go as far as that, Beckett said.

I don’t want to talk about you, or to hear others talk about you. It’s a cliché, of course: we talk about the dead in order to remember them, in order to keep them, in the only way we can, alive. But I have found that the more people say about you, for example those who spoke at the memorial—people who loved you, people who knew you well, people who are very good with words—the further you seem to slip away, the more like a hologram you become.

Oh, I know it’s a lot to ask, but I really want to get the poor thing out of that damned kennel! If I bring him home, though, I swear he’ll spend the rest of his life waiting by the door. And he deserves better than that, don’t you think?” Yes, I think, my heart breaking. You can’t explain death. And love deserves better than that.

Everyone knows the first thing Adam did with the animals that the Lord formed out of the freshly created earth—the first sign of his dominion over them—was to give each one a name. And until Adam assigned them their names, some say, the animals did not exist.

Rather than write about what you know, you told us, write about what you see. Assume that you know very little and that you’ll never know much until you learn how to see.

Graffiti on Philosophy Hall: The examined life ain’t worth it either.

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.

“Did you read about the Tibetan mastiffs?” I had indeed read the article in the Times, and I say so, but the woman’s need to vent is too great: she tells the story anyway.

I believe the intensity of the pity you feel for an animal has to do with how it evokes pity for yourself.

They do us the honor of treating us like gods, and we respond by treating them like things.

the image is irresistible: an avalanche of despair and, like the Saint Bernard coming through the snow with a mini barrel of brandy, Apollo fetches a book. Even if we know Saint Bernards never really did that.

performers like Laurie Anderson and Yo-Yo Ma have reported looking out at their concert audience and fantasizing that it’s all dogs.)

conductor Serge Koussevitzky complaining about being woken up mornings at Tanglewood by all those birds singing out of tune.