More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Predictions are difficult to make, particularly when they concern the future.” —Pierre Dac
Imagine the kind of strength it takes to constantly reinvent the presence of a loved one. And she’s right to do so. Just because somebody is gone doesn’t mean they don’t exist anymore—with a little imagination, you’re never alone.
know. Your future depends on your choices, on your will. It belongs to you.”
“So your predictions are just stories?” “They’re possibilities, not certainties. You decide.”
“You have two lives in you, Alice. The one you know, and another one. One that has been waiting for you for a very long time. They have nothing in common, apart from you. The man I spoke about yesterday is to be found somewhere along the path to that other, unknown life, but he will be forever lost to you unless you go on a long journey. A journey that will lead you to discover that nothing you believe in is real.” “But that doesn’t
Stop hiding in that broom closet and face your fears. I was terrified those nights that I was searching for the wounded, but doing something was so much better than staying huddled up inside my own prison.”
“Your sister loves other women?” “Yes, and although most people aren’t comfortable with the idea, I long ago decided that it was better than loving nobody at all.
Both of them remembered their childhood as a lonely time, but they saw their past solitude as having nothing to do with the love they had received, and more to do with their natural state of mind.
“You really ought to learn to quench your thirst with water,” said Alice. “Are you crazy? Do you want me to rust?”
I must say that I actually miss my father too, if only for not being able to blame him anymore for all the things that go wrong in my life.”
Mother always knew about my interest in and sensitivity to smells, but I never explained to her how odors mark every minute of my life and form a sort of language, a way of understanding the world. I smell the passage of time the way that others watch the changing colors of a sunset,
“Why are you smiling like that?” “Because we both agree that you’re a rather sorry fellow.”
My father certainly wasn’t the first man on earth to sleep with someone other than his wife, but he sullied her love by doing it.
“But if you hate your father for what he did to your mother, why do you let yourself behave like him?”
In watching the way he made my mother suffer, I came to understand that for a man, loving a woman is taking her beauty and putting it under a glass, where she feels sheltered and cherished . . . until it wilts and fades away. Then he turns elsewhere, to other flowers. I promised myself that if I ever came to love a woman, to love her truly, that I would leave her alone, refuse to take her and put her under glass.
Brutality is just the result of frustration, the incapacity to express oneself in words. Without words, people often resort to fists.”
our olfactory memories are the last ones to go. We may begin to forget the faces and voices of our loved ones, but never the smells.
Every important moment in our lives has a particular scent.”
“We all need somebody’s help. Nobody can do anything worthwhile on their own.”
Drunkenness is a stupid way of forgetting about one’s problems.”
I think one person’s courage can defeat the complacency of a thousand others.
