Great Circle

by Maggie Shipstead

Circles are wondrous because they are endless. Anything endless is wondrous. But endlessness is torture, too. I knew the horizon could never be caught but still chased it. What I have done is foolish; I had no choice but to do it.

I thought I would become more than I am, but instead I know I am less than I thought.

Closure doesn’t really exist, though. That’s why we’re always looking for it.

She was at an age when the future adult rattles the child’s bones like the bars of a cage.

He could not make peace with the magnitude of suffering in the world. It registered in him as a wave of heat and tingling, an acceleration in his heart and a lightness in his head—a sensation both puny and unbearable. The only way to live was to shut it out, but even when he turned his thoughts away, he was still aware of it, as one who lives alongside a levee is aware of the deluge waiting on the other side.

She hadn’t anticipated how much of her behavior after marriage would be motivated by a wish not to argue.

One thing I learned is that you don’t just love a person, you love a vision of your life with them.

So maybe she’s not quite herself again, not that she’s foolish enough to think there is one fixed version of a person.