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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Rachel Cohn
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October 15, 2022 - January 15, 2023
I had always felt that mittens were a few steps back on the evolutionary scale—why, I wondered, would we want to make ourselves into a less agile version of a lobster?
I want to believe there is a somebody out there just for me. I want to believe that I exist to be there for that somebody.
Was it the Logan Pearsall Smith quote “The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection, even though it consist in nothing more than in the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star” from page 202 of J. R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar or, a few lines down, the more simple “Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around”?
From Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road, was it “He had admired the ancient delicacy of the buildings and the way the street lamps made soft explosions of light green in the trees at night” or “The place had filled him with a sense of wisdom hovering just out of reach, of unspeakable grace prepared and waiting just around the corner, but he’d walked himself weak down its endless blue streets and all the people who knew how to live had kept their tantalizing secret to themselves”?
On page 82 of Anne Enright’s The Gathering, was it “But it is not just the sex, or remembered sex, that makes me think I love Michael Weiss from Brooklyn, now, seventeen years too late. It is the way he refused to own me, no matter how much I tried to be owned. It was the way he would not take me, he would only meet me, and that only e...
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It was one of those moments when you feel the future so much that it humbles the present.
“So what else can I tell you?” I asked. “I mean, to get you to reveal Lily to me.” She triangled her fingers under her chin. “Let’s see. Are you a bed wetter?” “Am I a …?” “Bed wetter. I am asking if you are a bed wetter.” I knew she was trying to get me to blink. But I wouldn’t. “No, ma’am. I leave my beds dry.” “Not even a little drip every now and then?” “I’m trying hard to see how this is germane.” “I’m gauging your honesty. What is the last periodical you read methodically?” “Vogue. Although, in the interest of full disclosure, that’s mostly because I was in my mother’s bathroom, enduring
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We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it, As though we had written it.
I might have liked to share a dance with you. If I may be so bold to say. I thought: But isn’t this a dance? Isn’t all of this a dance? Isn’t that what we do with words? Isn’t that what we do when we talk, when we spar, when we make plans or leave it to chance? Some of it’s choreographed. Some of the steps have been done for ages. And the rest—the rest is spontaneous. The rest has to be decided on the floor, in the moment, before the music ends.
I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn’t so much about plot. It was much more about character.
The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There’s no getting over that.”
“I mean, what if love isn’t a yes-or-no question? It’s not either you’re in love or you’re not. I mean, aren’t there different levels? And maybe these things, like words and expectations and whatever, don’t go on top of the love. Maybe it’s like a map, and they all have their own place, and then when you see it from the sky—whoa.”
