A Little Life

by Hanya Yanagihara

When did pursuing your ambitions cross the line from brave into foolhardy? How did you know when to stop?

But these were days of self-fulfillment, where settling for something that was not quite your first choice of a life seemed weak-willed and ignoble. Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice. There were times when the pressure to achieve happiness felt almost oppressive, as if happiness were something that everyone should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault.

He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.

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.”

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

viewed a successful relationship as one in which both people had recognized the best of what the other person had to offer and had chosen to value it as well.