Mayflies

by Andrew O'Hagan

some families are made up of strangers and nothing can change it.

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

Some people’s lives are about their parents and some aren’t.

I can’t understand why anybody wouldn’t love trouble. It’s just such an underrated—’

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.

He loved doing favours for strangers.

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

‘Being young is a kind of stardom with some people,’

‘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.

‘It was always a struggle to reach the future,’

‘Every honest man and woman is a juvenile, too,’

I believe we all felt it, and when the music finally stopped there was a freeze in the heart of the room.

‘All the important things are hard to think about.’

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.’

your friend is too young to die but he has lived a wonderful life and he will be remembered, and the love he expressed will multiply.

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