The Friend

by Sigrid Nunez

My own first writing teacher used to tell her students that if there was anything else they could do with their lives instead of becoming writers, any other profession, they should do it.

I was told this same thing about bing an actor.

Nowadays (the table agreed) the feckless bohemian had all but ceased to exist, replaced by the hipster known for his knowingness, his consumer savvy, his palate and other cultivated tastes.

It’s not so much that she doesn’t look sixty as that she makes being attractive at sixty look easy.

Goals

There are two kinds of womanizer, she said. There’s the kind that loves women and the kind that hates them.

There’s a certain kind of person who, having read this far, is anxiously wondering: Does something bad happen to the dog?

It's me. I'm a certain kind of person.

the fear that writing about someone is a way of killing that person. Transforming someone’s life into a story is like turning that person into a pillar of salt.

It’s because a person has a sense of humor that we feel we can trust them, says Milan Kundera.)

No writing is ever wasted, you used to say. Even if something doesn’t work out and you end up throwing it away, as a writer you always learn something.

Consider rereading, how risky it is, especially when the book is one that you loved. Always the chance that it won’t hold up, that you might, for whatever reason, not love it as much. When this happens, and to me it happens all the time (and more and more as I get older), the effect is so disheartening that I now open old favorites warily.

A pause here to wonder why we call a womanizer a wolf. Given that the wolf is known for being a loyal, monogamous mate and devoted parent.

I have heard of a study according to which cats, unlike many other animal species, do not forgive. (Like writers, perhaps, who, according to an editor I know, never forget a slight.)

Thus was I saved, perhaps, from becoming an old cat lady. I am glad that, in the age of the internet, which has revived the ancient worship of cats as gods, the label is losing its stigma.

“You two were such good friends for so long. How I used to envy that. I used to think, if only he and I hadn’t fallen in love, then we could have had a friendship like that!”

“Something I read, about how, among people who try to kill themselves and survive, almost all say they regretted it. Like jumpers who say that as soon as they hit the air they knew they’d made a mistake, they didn’t really want to die.”

When you’re lying in bed full of night thoughts, such as why did your friend have to die and how much longer will it be before you lose the roof over your head, having a huge warm body pressed along the length of your spine is an amazing comfort.

That's what I love about pets!

Do what is difficult because it is difficult. Do what will cost you the most. Who were these people?

Lol my thoughts exactly, that's shit advice

What are we, Apollo and I, if not two solitudes that protect and border and greet each other?

And I remember thinking that, whatever Tolstoy had to say about unhappy families, unhappy couples were all unhappy in the same way.

Better a dog for a husband than a husband who’s a dog, I always say.

BARS

I once heard a stranger in agitated conversation with her pug: And I suppose it’s all my fault again, isn’t it? At which, I swear, the dog rolled its eyes.

Haha this sounds like me and Snuggle!

Tempted to put too much faith in the great male mind, remember this: It looked at cats and declared them gods. It looked at women and asked, Are they human? And, once that hard nut had been cracked: But do they have souls?

The swans in Wannsee often appeared toward the end of the day, their feathers taking on the changing colors of the sunset. Rose-tinted swans, swans as pink as flamingos, as blue as violets, swans the deep purple of twilight, night swans. Birds out of a dream, a reminder of the beauty of the world. Of heaven.

In spite of all he’s been through, he has remained kind, he has kept his—humanity, I want to say (what word should I say?).

It’s not uncommon to wish to have known what a person you’ve come to love was like before you met them. It hurts, almost, not to have known what a beloved was like as a child. I have felt this way about every man I’ve ever been in love with, and about many close friends as well, and now it’s how I feel about Apollo.

I feel this way about Snuggle.