Legends of the Fall

by Jim Harrison

the certainly accidental cohesion of two souls and bodies, often resulting in terror and unhappiness because so much previously unknown energy is released.

Life was better if you were no one’s victim.

And he felt the generalized fearfulness of his approaching age: Miryea seemed transparently his first, last and only shot at filling his life to a fullness that everything else could only dimly suggest.

The heart wants life so much and the brain is shocked at the approach of death. The soldier always thinks it will be someone else, the man before or behind him, or hopefully no one he knows will ever die.

Intimacies can be frightening in the light of day.

There was an abyss he had almost forgotten between what his heart wished would happen and what would probably occur in the hours that came toward him before sleep.