A Little Life

by Hanya Yanagihara

“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.

Fairness is for happy people, for people who have been lucky enough to have lived a life defined more by certainties than by ambiguities.

It is morals that help us make the laws, but morals do not help us apply them.

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.”

Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.

it had seemed to him the ideal expression of an adult relationship, to have someone with whom you could discuss the mechanics of a shared existence.

“You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you.”

Never try to make yourself more palatable in order to make your colleagues more comfortable.

There is Willem, imprisoned forever in a one-sided conversation. Here he is, in life, imprisoned as well.