Mayflies

by Andrew O'Hagan

being young is a kind of warfare in which the great enemy is experience.

He’d quickly folded away the conversation from earlier, the factory, the depression, the fears he harboured about his life, and returned to the banter, as if to prove that every mood has its instantaneous opposite. Tully was always like that – he could switch it off. But embarrassments were subtle, and he often took quick revenge on his thoughtful moments.

They say you know nothing at eighteen. But there are things you know at eighteen that you will never know again.

The water was cold but it soon warms up when the boys are made of sunshine.

It isn’t always the fittest who survive, but the people who have the information, those who clock the exits.

I could find in relentless occupation what I could never find in helplessness: a way through.

In Antony and Cleopatra, there’s a line, Make death proud to take us.’

‘It’s been my good fortune to share a story with him,’ I said, ‘and that’s all we’ll ever have. There’s no more. Earth is all the heaven we’ll ever know.’

It used to be so natural, dancing. Because the music defined you and the heart was in step. Then it leaves you. Or does it? Saturday night changes and your body forgets the old compliance. You’re not part of it any more and your feet hesitate and your arms stay close to your sides. It’s there somewhere, the easy rhythm from other rooms and other occasions, and you’re half convinced it will soon come back. It’s not the moves – the moves are there – but your connection to the music has become nostalgic, so the body is responding not to a discovery but to an old, dear echo.

He was a friend to friendship itself and never expected people to be better than they were.

You are a human being. And that’s an unstable condition that ends badly for all of us.’

The thing we know is that humanity has a hundred per cent mortality rate. We all die. But the facts don’t matter – we can’t bear to lose the people we love, and it doesn’t quite register about the billions who die, or even about our own coming deaths. We don’t experience our own death the way we experience the deaths of those we love.’

‘Go gently with people’s pain. It’s the same as yours.’

‘Men have a way of writing themselves into each other’s experience and placing it away from the women they love.’