Shirley > Recent Status Updates

"...ich wollte doch so gerne Jemand, etwas Besonderes sein."

"Ich hatte andere wie ihn gesehen, sie hatten es irgendwie in sich, die Musik war nicht vom Denken getrennt oder hatte vielmehr nichts mit dem Denken zu tun, sondern führte ihr Eigenleben. Wenn sie spielten, spielten sie [...] und die Freiheit, die darin lag und im Grunde das war, worum es bei der Musik ging, konnte ich einfach vergessen."

"Ihr Zimmer war voll solcher Verheißungen, die ich innerlich kaum in Worte fassen vermochte, es war vielmehr so, dass sie Gefühlswellen durch mich durch rollen ließen."

"...nichts von all dem, was ich bis dahin gesehen hatte, warnte mich vor der Invasion des eigenen Lebens, die mit Kindern einhergeht. Die ungeheure Nähe, die zu ihnen entsteht, wie das eigene Temperament und die eigenen Launen mit ihrem Temperament und ihren Launen verwoben werden..."

"Die Welt zu verstehen heißt, einen bestimmten Abstand zu ihr einzunehmen."

"Für das Herz ist das Leben einfach: Es schlägt, solange es kann."

"We experience the new life in glimmers, I think, in moments when we apprehend the possibility of new life. When we choose to love through our innocent selves, and not just our damaged parts. When we love through what hurts us, [...] knowing we won't be alone. Or leap into the void, knowing that despite the emptiness that lies between us, we can sometimes find our way, all the way, to each other."

"Life had changed, again and again, but had I?"

"I felt a traitor's desire to soften the language, to protect Esther from Romei's vituperation. But I couldn't. Who was I? The translator. I was no one."

"It was as if Romei were writing in two languages at once, as if two stories were playing themselves out together, one reflected in the mirror of the other. Words that appeared related, words that usually confused readers with their non-correspondence, were miraculously made cognate, reconciled by the all-powerful poet - but why? To suggest that as ill-advised as this coupling appeared, it was also good and right?"

"Absolute fidelity? [...] Pure translation, pure unwavering love? Of course not. There's always a rupture, always an abandonment. The translated one is always betrayed."

"You think love is not something we experience in the imagination?"

"The translator makes a holy commitment to understand, to listen with all possible intensity, to step backward, ever backward, through the labyrinth of an author's ideas and devices, uncovering his decisions and triumphs, line by line, until she arrives, finally, at the moment of creation."

"Translation requires, and generates, a rare kind of intimacy. Like sex done right."

"You called to ask me when I was coming home, and when I reminded you that I wasn't coming home, you sounded so disappointed that I decided to come home."

"When it's going well, the fact of it is everywhere. [...] The hitch, of course, is that when it's going badly, it's in all the same places."

"There are times when I worry that I've already lost myself. That is, that myself is so inseparable from being with you that if we were to separate, I would no longer be. I save that thought for when I feel the darkest discontent. I never meant to depend so much on someone else."

"I found myself thinking: If this continues, if this goes on, then when I dies, your memories of me will be my greatest accomplishment. Your memories will be my most lasting impression."

"There is no word for the recipient of love. There is only a word for the giver. There is the assumption that lovers come in pairs."

"It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can't even make the comparisons any more, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play games of better and worse. It's simply a matter of is and is no longer."

"We'll have contests to see which one of us can be more sceptical. [...] But. In the end, we both want the right thing to happen, the right person to win, the right idea to prevail. We have no faith that it will happen, but still we want it. Neither of us has given up on anything."

"Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough."

"Every time I call you mine, I feel like I'm forcing it, as if saying it can make it so. As if I'm reminding you, and reminding the universe: mine. As if that one word from me could have that kind of power."

"There are times when I'm alone that I think, This is it. This is actually the natural state. [...] I am myself, and that is the point. Pairing is a social construction. It is by no means necessary for everyone to do it. Maybe I'm better like this. Maybe I could live my life in my own world, and then simply leave it when it's time to go."

I imagine you saved my life. And then I wonder if I'm just imagining it."

"The kiss I like the most is one of the slow ones. It's as much breath as touch, as much no as yes. You lean in from the side, and I have to turn a little to make it happen."

"We have fallen through the surface of want and are deep in the trenches of need."

"Sometimes I will be struck with a kind of awe that we're together. [...] I would be overwhelmed by the evidence, by all the lines connecting you to me, and us to love."

"Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from a thing and still care about it. If I wanted to detach completely, I would move my body away. I would stop the conversation midsentence. I would leave the bed. Instead I hover over it for a second. I glance off in another direction. But I always glance back at you."

"Would it have even been possible, if we'd met then?"