Shirley > Recent Status Updates

"Es kommt vor, dass man eines Abends infolge des aufmerksamen Blicks von jemandem das Bedürfnis verspürt, ihm nicht die eigene Erfahrung zu vermitteln, sondern ganz einfach einige dieser disparaten Einzelheiten, die von einem unsichtbaren Faden zusammen gehalten werden, einem Faden, der zu reißen droht und den man den Lauf eines Lebens nennt."

"Die Sonne war verschwunden, und der Himmel war noch blau. Ich würde den Augenblick nutzen, bevor die Straßenlampen angingen, jenen Augenblick des Tages, der mir der liebste ist. Nicht mehr ganz Tag. Noch nicht Nacht."

"For the rest of the afternoon and well into the night, the city trains ran late."

"Not all fires can be fought."

"Anna's German homework regularly consisted of vocabulary drills, verb conjugation exercises, declension practice, and the writing of many, many, many sentences. Love's a sentence, Anna thought. A death sentence."

"To the night, to the cold autumn air, to the stars, to the trains in the distance, to the forest behind her, and to the sleeping inhabitants of the town below, Anna confessed: I love him. I love him. I love him. Like people in pain love opiates."

"...every heretofore moment in her life, the ones that mattered and the ones that only seemed to matter, had added up to the sum of this intense instant, this instant alone. In the short, sharp span of a single heartbeat, she knew that nothing she'd ever said or done, and nothing she would ever say or do again, would carry even half the tragedy of this."

"Synchronicity often masquerades as coincidence."

"Every mask becomes a death mask when you can no longer put it on or take it off at will. When it conforms to the contours of your psychic face. When you mistake the persona you project for your living soul. When you can no more distinguish between the two."

"Is it not always the case? Given any two people in a relationship, one will always love more, the other less."

"Asshole poisoning is a contagious disease that anyone can catch."

"Status differences will always be with us...but look at what these and other leaders do to build organizations with fewer assholes and spark bettwr performance [...] they realise that their company hae anf should have a pecking order, but they do everything they can to downplay and reduce status and power differences among members."

"Er wird nie wieder etwas riechen, er wird nie wieder etwas schmecken, er wird sich nie wieder etwas vornehmen, er wird nie wieder glücklich sein, er wird nie wieder traurig sein, [...] er wird nie wieder etwas hoffen, er wird nie wieder diese Leere in sich spüren, [...] er wird nichts mehr vermissen, er wird endlich die Gewissheit haben, dass von nun an nichts mehr schlimmer werden kann."

"Die Zeit rennt. Dank ihr sind wir zunächst Lebende [...] Dann sterben wir und bleiben noch ein paar Jahre bei denen, die uns gekannt haben, aber [...] die Toten werden alte Tote, niemand erinnert sich mehr an sie, und sie verschwinden im Nichts; nur einige [...] hinterlassen ihren Namen in den Gedächtnissen, verwandeln sich jedoch, ohne jeden authentischen Zeugen, jede echte Erinnerung, in Marionetten."

"How many new mothers are seduced by the baby's deep interest in gazing into their eyes, into a relationship with the baby that becomes primary, one that leaves the father sidelined as a romantic partner?"

"Most of the journey is shedding those layers of "I'm not enough". The Beloved is not the husbanf or the lover. The Beloved is in me. The Beloved is me."

"All human eyes are beautiful, but Pegeen's were very black and heavily lashed anf gorgeous now, with the sparkle of her joke, or her plan, or, perhaps, her vision of some impossible future."

"Where are you supposed to put your arms when you dance? It's like the Universal Question. I guess you're supposed to put them around someone."

"My stupid fantasies about ending up homeless are just that - the fact is that my parents will take me in anytime, anywhere. But some people have to get lucky just to live. And I never knew I could make anybody lucky. If Bobby can get a place to live, I think, then I can get a life worth living."

"In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another."

"He was forty-two years old, and he could see nothing before him that he wished to enjoy and little behind him that he cared to remember."

"Thus he found it possible to live, and even to be happy, now and then."

"His mother was facing him, but she did not see him. Her eyes were squeezed shut; she qas breathing heavily, her face twisted as if in pain, and her closed fists were pressed against her cheeks. With wonder Stoner realized that she was crying, deeply and silently, with the shame and awkwardness of one who seldom weeps. He watched her for a moment more; then he got heavily to his feet and walked out of the parlor."

"How vast the city is, and yet how lonely. No one has time for anyone else. Our lives are rules by the clock, each one of us trapped in its ticking, stuck in the rat race with no end in sight. Perhaps we are no different from cars, each a self-contained cocoon, each travelling apart from the others, hurtling down a highway to nowhere."

"The future is a mistery that is never revealed to us completely; it can only be glimpsed dimly in our dreams and imagination. Foresight is just a glorified name given to the process of drawing lessons from yesterday's failures and successes to plan for a better tomorrow. It's a process humans have been pursuing since the dawn of history. And it's called survival."

"We never really see things as they are. Just as beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, value lies in the beholder's mind."

"Without simple affection [...] a marriage can't work."

"I mourn the extinction upon my death of the memory of the happiness that we had shared. Our happiness which, now that she is dead, has become inalterable, a loss that no hope [...] can compensate."