Second Place

by Rachel Cusk

Life rarely offers sufficient time or opportunity to be free in more than one way.

The wounded don’t survive in nature: a woman could never throw herself on fate and expect to come out of it intact.

As Sophocles said it – how dreadful knowledge of the truth is, when the truth can’t help you!

‘It’s all so silly,’ he said softly, half to himself. ‘You get tired of reality, and then you discover it’s already gotten tired of you. We should try to stay real,’ he said,

The truth was that I questioned the value of my love – I wasn’t sure how much benefit it could be to anybody.

Language is the only thing capable of stopping the flow of time, because it exists in time, is made of time, yet it is eternal – or can be.

I told her she would always be able to find a white man to be obliterated by, if that was what she decided she wanted.

True art means seeking to capture the unreal.