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The longer you live, the harder it becomes. To grab them. Each little moment as it arrives. To be living in something other than the past or the future. To be actually here. Forever, Emily Dickinson said, is composed of nows. But how do you inhabit the now you are in? How do you stop the ghosts of all the other nows from getting in? How, in short, do you live?
That, I suppose, is a price we pay for love: the absorbing of another’s pain as if our own.
I couldn’t steady myself. I could see why my mother needed walls to lean onto after Father died. Grief tilts you.
‘Did you ever get caught?’ ‘No, not in the way you mean. No, I didn’t. But as you get older, Anton, you realise that you never get away with things. The human mind has its own. . . prisons. You don’t have a choice over everything in life.’
every present moment is paying for a future one.
It is the simplest, purest joy on earth, I realise, to make someone you care about laugh.
I realise I would like to solve the mystery of her just as much as she wants to solve the mystery of me
The happiness of just one minute ago seems totally out of reach.
And, just as it only takes a moment to die, it only takes a moment to live. You just close your eyes and let every futile fear slip away. And then, in this new state, free from fear, you ask yourself: who am I? If I could live without doubt what would I do? If I could be kind without the fear of being fucked over? If I could love without fear of being hurt? If I could taste the sweetness of today without thinking of how I will miss that taste tomorrow? If I could not fear the passing of time and the people it will steal? Yes. What would I do? Who would I care for? What battle would I fight?
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‘“I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.”’
Everything in life is uncertain. That is how you know you are existing in the world, the uncertainty.
