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She believed that all you wanted, you would eventually receive, and that fate was a force which worked with, not against you.
How could Gwen guess that March knows fifteen inside out; that she knows, for instance, whatever feels most urgent and unavoidable to you at that age can follow you forever, if you turn and run.
It is astounding to consider how many losses a single individual can sustain.
always in a hurry, always wanting more.
March doesn’t cry now; she’s far too busy for anything like that. Still, there are mornings when she wakes with tears in her eyes. That’s when she knows she’s been dreaming about him. And although she never remembers her dreams, there’s always the scent of grass on her pillow, as if the past were something that could come back to you, if you only wished hard enough, if you were brave enough to call out his name.
That is how you know you’ve left childhood behind—when you wish for time to go backward.
“Make a tree sound and its fruit will be sound. Make a tree rotten and its fruit will be rotten.” Intrigued, Gwen leans forward. “Meaning?” “We’re all responsible for ourselves, aren’t we?” Ken takes the bumps in the road easily. “And what we harvest.”
You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go—into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you’re not really there, you’re someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don’t recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he’s never there. It’s only his spirit, that’s what’s there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you
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At twenty you’re convinced you know everything, but forty is even worse; that’s when you’ve realized no one can know everything, and yet when it comes to certain situations, you still believe yourself to be an absolute expert. When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure. That’s what you learn at sixty, and, as it turns out, no one is ever surprised by this bit of news.
There is no measuring love, other than all or nothing or that space in between. This is all, she sees that in him. This is more than everything.
Richard is certain that other species fall in love—primates, of course, and canines—but he has wondered about his beetles. There are people who would surely get a chuckle out of the mere suggestion, but in Richard’s opinion it’s pure vanity to presume that love exists only on our terms. A red leaf may be the universe for the tortoise beetle or the ladybird. A single touch the ecstasy of a lifetime. And so, here he is, in love despite everything. It is he, stupider than any beetle, and far more obstinate, who has traveled three thousand miles, even though he fully expects to be turned away.
It’s not the lie that’s the problem: it’s the distance the lie forges between you.
History is personal, Gwen understands that now. All you are seeing is what’s before you, the rest is guesswork.
How do you tell an awful truth to someone you care for and wish to protect?
In the end, what a friend wants for herself, that’s what you have to want for her as well.
Here is the most difficult aspect of forgiveness: You have to ask in order to receive it.
A woman who has her own money can leave you when you least expect it; she can walk off anytime.
But what do they know about love? You make bargains you’d never imagine you’d agreed to, and you do it over and over again.
What I want is mercy, not sacrifice.
Some things are done rather than decided,
Whose fault is it when love is denied? When youth is a curse rather than a blessing? Oh, if only there weren’t other people involved; if only they were the last two people on earth, just them, opening the door to this old house, looking out at the deep, blue night and all those stars they’ll never learn the names of, all those planets they can’t even see.
She was done with love. At least with the sort of love that has rules you have to abide by, and which, in the end, offers far less than you’d hoped for.
If this is what love can do, they’d best give it another name.
