A Little Life

by Hanya Yanagihara

the only thing uniting them being their newness to America and their identical expressions of exhaustion, that blend of determination and resignation that only the immigrant possesses.

He got to see his friends differently, not as just appendages to his life but as distinct characters inhabiting their own stories; he felt sometimes that he was seeing them for the first time, even after so many years of knowing them.

In their deaths, Willem was able to remember that he had loved them after all, and that they had taught him things he treasured knowing, and that they had never asked from him anything he wasn’t able to do or provide.

At such times, he envied his friends for the exact things he had once pitied them for: the fact that no one had any expectations for them, the ordinariness of their families (or their very lack of them), the way they navigated their lives by only their own ambitions.

Much of his friendship with Jude, it often seemed, was not letting himself ask the questions he knew he ought to, because he was afraid of the answers.

The walks had long ceased to be something he enjoyed, although he didn’t not enjoy them, either—it was simply something he did.

Friendship, companionship: it so often defied logic, so often eluded the deserving, so often settled itself on the odd, the bad, the peculiar, the damaged.

His silence was both a necessity and a protection, and had the added benefit of making him appear more mysterious and more interesting than he knew he was.

“Dear Jude,” Harold wrote, “thank you for your beautiful (if unnecessary) note. I appreciate everything in it. You’re right; that mug means a lot to me. But you mean more. So please stop torturing yourself. “If I were a different kind of person, I might say that this whole incident is a metaphor for life in general: things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.

they were a fleet of parrots shaking their bright-colored feathers at one another, presenting themselves to their peers without fear or guile.

the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”

But how was one to be an adult? Was couplehood truly the only appropriate option? (But then, a sole option was no option at all.)

all you really have to do is just be a good person, which you already are, and enjoy your life. You’re young. You have years and years to figure out what you want to do and how you want to live.” “And what if this is how I want to live?” “Well, then, that’s fine,”

Age, he guessed. And with it: Jobs. Money. Children. The things to forestall death, the things to ensure one’s relevance, the things to comfort and provide context and content.

“And if we are being philosophical—which we today are—we can say that life itself is the axiom of the empty set. It begins in zero and ends in zero.

An elegant mind wants elegant endings, and Walter had the most elegant mind. So I wish him goodbye; I wish him the answer to the axiom he so loved.”

He had never done it before, and so he had no real understanding of how slow, and sad, and difficult it was to end a friendship.

So he will never have to do anything he doesn’t want to for food or shelter: he finally knows that. But what is he willing to do to feel less alone?

But sometimes he wonders whether he has insulated himself so much that he has neglected some essential part of being human: maybe he is ready to be with someone. Maybe enough time has passed so it will be different.

Neither of us offered to stay in touch with the other; both of us, I like to think, had too much respect for the other to do so.

If you keep trying to find everything, you’ll wind up with nothing.

As you got older, you realized that the qualities you valued in the people you slept with or dated weren’t necessarily the ones you wanted to live with, or be with, or plod through your days with.

But there is a moment before they begin heading uphill and Jude begins walking toward them in which they all hold their positions, and it reminds him of a set, in which every scene can be redone, every mistake can be corrected, every sorrow reshot. And in that moment, they are on one edge of the frame, and Jude is on the other, but they are all smiling at one another, and the world seems to hold nothing but sweetness.

“You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way.

All the most terrifying Ifs involve people. All the good ones do as well.

maybe you two are there together, floating through the climate. Or maybe he is closer still: maybe he is that gray cat that has begun to sit outside our neighbor’s house, purring when I reach out my hand to it; maybe he is that new puppy I see tugging at the end of my other neighbor’s leash; maybe he is that toddler I saw running through the square a few months ago, shrieking with joy, his parents huffing after him; maybe he is that flower that suddenly bloomed on the rhododendron bush I thought had died long ago; maybe he is that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist.