More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
back in New York, relatives and acquaintances alike were impressed by Benjamin’s
She knew, then, that this solemn form of joy, so pure because it had no content, so reliable because it relied on nobody else, was the state for which she would henceforth strive.
no greater violence than the one done to meaning. After this
Sitting in the twilight of that hushed room, Helen understood at once that her mother had triumphed. She knew, with total certainty, that Benjamin Rask would take her as his wife, if she let him. And she decided right then that she would. Because she saw that he was, in essence, alone. In his vast solitude she would find hers—and with it, the freedom her overbearing parents had always denied her.
Intimacy can be an unbearable burden for those who, first experiencing it after a lifetime of proud self-sufficiency, suddenly realize it makes their world complete. Finding bliss becomes one with the fear of losing it.
Now that same distance had become a literal symbol of her new station. People tiptoed across the gap, trying to confirm with every hesitant step that they were indeed allowed to approach her. Often confused with shyness or arrogance, her silence was now, she could tell, taken to be the becoming attitude for someone of her standing, and her ill-concealed ennui was all of a sudden welcomed as sophisticated detachment—it would have been vulgar for someone like her to show an interest in anything. Everyone expected and even wanted her to be intimidating. But she had not felt the full extent of the
...more
Precisely because they were so controlled and mediated, these were Benjamin and Helen’s most intimate moments.
Most of us prefer to believe we are the active subjects of our victories but only the passive objects of our defeats. We triumph, but it is not really we who fail—we are ruined by forces beyond our control.
For an hour or so, she would enjoy the bliss of impersonality—of becoming pure perception, of existing only as that which saw the mountaintop, heard the bell, smelled the air.
As time went by, Benjamin had to own up to a frightful fact: Helen’s death had not altered his life.
Nothing, in substance, had changed—there was only a difference in degree. His mourning was simply a more radical expression of his marriage: both were the result of a perverse combination of love and distance. In Helen’s life, he had been unable to bridge the abyss that separated her from him. His failure had never turned into resentment or stopped him from looking for new crossings. But now, even if his love remained unchanged, that distance had become absolute. He kept
between his former self and who he had become: while that young person had believed he would renounce everything in favor of his
calling, this aging man was sure he had given life a fair try.
The early descendants of the Dutch and British settlers who passed for our local nobility wanted nothing with the German immigrant who became a trapper, then a fur trader and finally a real estate tycoon. And they had only contempt for the Staten Island ferryman who turned into a shipping and railroad magnate. Yet once these traders and builders joined the upper echelons of society, it was only to look down on the newcomers from Pittsburgh and Cleveland with their sooty, oily fortunes. Because
Today’s gentleman is yesterday’s upstart.
that self-interest, if properly directed, need not be divorced from the common good, as all the transactions he conducted throughout his life eloquently show. These two principles (we make our own weather; personal gain ought to be a public asset)
Panic as opportunity for forging new relationships.
Every life is organized around a small number of events
that either propel us or bring us to a grinding halt. We spend the years between these episodes benefiting or suffering from their consequences until the arrival of the next forceful moment. A man’s worth is established by the number of these defining circumstances he is able to create for himself. He need not always be successful, for there can be great honor in defeat. But he ought to be the main actor in the decisive scenes in his existence, whether they be epic or tragic.
My first book, a collection of short stories, was published when I was nine years old. One of the stories was about a conspiracy of fish and their failed plans to depose humanity and take over dry land. The unhappy hero of another tale was a girl who died in parts, limb by limb, until she was reduced to an eye. There was also a story of a nine-year-old who lived at the top of a mountain alone with her father, a jewel thief whom the girl broke out of jail again and again.
These books (and a friendly librarian) led to others. Dorothy Sayers, Carolyn Wells, Mary Rinehart, Margery Allingham. Well into my adolescence these were the women who took care of me in the absence of my mother.
the closer one is to a source of power, the quieter it gets. Authority and money surround themselves with silence, and one can measure the reach of someone’s influence by the thickness of the hush enveloping them.
think my desire for being smitten was stronger than my desire for him.
roman à clef
My job is about being right. Always. If I’m ever wrong, I must make use of all my means and resources to bend and align reality according to my mistake so that it ceases to be a mistake.”
The simple depth of those who are close to the edges of existence. Her childhood and her fatal disease.
For the first time since meeting Andrew Bevel, it occurred to me that I should be afraid.
