Serafim and Claire Quotes

“What was driving her, however, had changed. Claire had always known that genius wasn't born out of a gift or education or genetics. It was born, simply, out of love. When a person loved one thing and one thing only, they could give themselves to it, surrender themselves entirely, sacrifice blindly. Genius, as it turned out, wasn't a cause but an effect. It was something that followed almost naturally in the wake of the truest kind of love. What had shifted in Claire wasn't the intensity and conviction of that love, but what it was pinned to. For Claire it was no longer just about seamless movement, about physically channelling the music that was quivering in her bones; no longer, really, about great dance. It was about greatness itself. Claire was falling exclusively in love with the idea of success on a grand scale. And she was sure that genius would follow her there.”
― Mark Lavorato, Serafim and Claire

“Winters in Portugal had been, at worst, cool and gloomy. In Quebec, Serafim discovered that the coolness in the air could quickly reach a point where the particles themselves felt jagged, like teeth that could bite pinholes into his skin, despite the layers and layers of clothing he wore. Serafim observed oblong puddles from bitter rain begin to clamp shut overnight, incisors of ice sealing themselves up into plate glass smiles, cross-hatches of canines and molars maniacally clenched. He sometimes wondered how people in the streets, slouching with their collars high and going about their daily business, didn't die in great numbers.”
― Mark Lavorato, Serafim and Claire

“Serafim now had the liberty to go anywhere in the world, do anything. He had no land, no ties, no home to return to. He was unbound, floating illimitable; yet he had never felt so burdened in his life. What if we choose confinement, he contemplated; what if we actually seek to settle into the security of some type of bondage? A person certainly never has to worry about their bearings, or who and what they are, when held in place by a few simple, even token, chains. Rendering oneself a captive liberates one from all the squeamish dilemmas of free will.”
― Mark Lavorato, Serafim and Claire

“Serafim's long-term memory was terrible. He noticed that when other people reconstructed their pasts, the access they had to previous moments in their lives seemed to be much like looking through a kaleidoscope, in that each infinitesimal compartment glowed just as brightly as the next, and merely by focusing on one particular chamber they could almost transport themselves to that place, to feel its textures, hold up its velvet tastes and sounds, and feel the air as crisp as the day they'd lived it. Whereas for Serafim it was more like looking back onto a grey beach, where a long, twig-scratched line in the sand gradually vanished into the sea haze of the distance. Squint as he might, the farther away it was, the less he could see.”
― Mark Lavorato, Serafim and Claire