Elizabeth Finch

by Barnes.Julian

‘And remember, whenever you see a character in a novel, let alone a biography or history book, reduced and neatened into three adjectives, always distrust that description.’

‘Monomania. Monogamy. Monotony. Nothing good begins this way.’

‘Enforced monogamy is as much to say enforced happiness, which we know is not possible. Unenforced monogamy might seem possible. Romantic monogamy might seem to be desirable. But the first normally collapses back into a version of enforced monogamy, while the second is liable to become obsessive and hysterical. And thereby lies close to monomania. We should always distinguish between mutual passion and shared monomania.’

We all pursue what we think is best for us, even if it means our extinction. Sometimes, especially if it means that.

‘Goethe, than whom few of us can hope to live a fuller or more interesting life, stated on his deathbed – he was eighty-two at the time – that he had only ever felt happiness in his life for one quarter of an hour.’

‘Perhaps Goethe never found the right woman.’

that old question which has become known as the Mozart dilemma: is life beautiful, but sad; or sad, but beautiful?

why should we expect our collective memory – which we call history – to be any less fallible than our personal memory?

Those who survive, or excel, or overmaster are merely those who are better organised and wave bigger guns; those who are better at killing.

Sex as civic duty? I thought, somehow, this was very Dutch. Also, sort of adorable.

One secret of the Christian religion’s success was always to employ the best moviemakers.

Once, we were talking about public reaction to some political scandal, and I suggested that it was normal for people to need someone to blame. ‘Normal doesn’t mean it’s a good idea,’ she answered.

‘OK, then, well, are you a feminist?’ She smiled at me. ‘Naturally – I am a woman.’

‘So what have you got for me?’ And I would smile, and do my best to gratify her curiosity, to make her laugh, to report from a world of failed marriages, successful children and a peripatetic career.

‘The task of the present is to correct our understanding of the past. And that task becomes the more urgent when the past cannot be corrected.’

And secondly, reducing the diversity between people didn’t result in harmony within. The narcissism of small differences ensured this.

‘For a woman, fidelity is a virtue; for a man, it’s hard work.’

For a woman, love has historically been a matter of possession followed by sacrifice: that’s to say, of being possessed and then of being sacrificed.

They say things are determined by genetics, by parenting, by heredity, by climate, by diet, by geography, by time spent in the womb, by nature, by nurture. They fail to hear the elephant in the room, trumpeting away: history.

From what I did and what I said Let them not seek to find who I was

This being Europe, I felt it safe to kiss her on the cheek.

Well, getting our history wrong is part of being a person.