The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

In his life so far he had known only the kind of doubt that is calculated and secure. He had known only suspicion, cynicism, probability—never the fearful unraveling that comes when one ceases to trust in one’s own trusting power; never the dread panic that follows this unraveling; never the dull void that follows last of all.

“Round here, everybody’s always talking about home,” said Balfour. “Can’t help but think that the pleasure’s in the missing.”

For although a man is judged by his actions, by what he has said and done, a man judges himself by what he is willing to do, by what he might have said, or might have done—a judgment that is necessarily hampered, not only by the scope and limits of his imagination, but by the ever-changing measure of his doubt and self-esteem.

Reason is no match for desire: when desire is purely and powerfully felt, it becomes a kind of reason of its own.