The Lessons Quotes

“He must fly regularly. I don’t. Not any more. So I have been watching everything with interest. I love to watch people and eavesdrop. I can’t help myself. This scene, with passengers taking their seats and struggling with hand luggage, everyone at cross purposes, is repeated all day on dozens of flights at hundreds of airports and must seem commonplace to those working, but this moment won’t happen again. Not just to me, but to all of us. Life is like that.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“I loved Simon. But love was not enough, I knew now. Love had never been enough, if I am honest. Love should be reason enough. Love lifts and holds you. But love hurts and love burns. Love ends. Love is also dread and fear because it ends.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“I happen to like my own company. I prefer it, in fact, to any other.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“Sometimes people are bound to one another. Stars align. True love and all that. But sometimes people just become horribly
entangled. They’re not meant to be, but they become tied. They hurt each other every time they move. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“There’s nothing beautiful about sex, or love for that matter. Sex is never itself, it’s always a stand-in for something else. Something bigger than me or the moment. And as for love, it’s difficult enough finding happiness. We all settle for peace of mind. Or stalemate, or truce or whatever war analogy suits. Because it is war, this stupid thing between men and women, and I had been foolish to think it could be anything else.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“Harry and I are so different,’ I continued. ‘We come from different worlds. Why enter into his world and risk anything of mine?”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“I have everything written down somewhere. That’s all I have ever done. I record. I take notes. And now, as memory fades, that’s all I have left. I hate growing old. I hate this longing to be something I’m not. The desire to be young again. To relive those years, to do things differently, to write differently. To make amends. I would like never to look back. But it is all I seem capable of doing these days.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“One of the hardest things with Austen is her insistence that we become better people. It isn’t overt, but it’s there nonetheless. Don’t you find? Of course we all want to become better people. But not always after her fashion. I haven’t the strength to be forever alert to the feelings of others. My own occupy my time well enough. Mastering myself should be enough.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“There is never an obligation to love. Men always suppose there is.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“I didn’t need to read passages from Great Expectations to know she didn’t return my feelings for her. But then, she wouldn’t let me leave, either, so that was something. Her heart was broken, not absent.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“Loss was the one thing we could count on.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“I wouldn’t say I was in love but when he praised my work I found it very hard not to cry.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“How excited, sexually excited, men get reading about strong women. The self-same women they run screaming from in life. The more mycompanion speculates, the harder he gets, no doubt, picturing that fine, looking young woman in the photo doing all the things my female narrators do. What heterosexual woman has not at some time in their life put a man’s penis in her mouth? Who has not let a man fumble about under her skirt with his hand or mouth? These things are not new. But let a beautiful young woman write about such acts, and you have publishing gold.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“Matriarchy or nothing. I can love a man but not men.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“In my experience it is better not to talk to anyone, friend or stranger, who has read your work. All praise is doubted, all criticism taken to heart. Neither party finds the experience satisfactory.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“Of course I adopted a positive outlook. When in Rome. Besides, pessimism made one a pariah. Sarcasm was outlawed, irony unknown. If one couldn’t afford two cars, a pool, three bathrooms, and a television in every room, at least one could have an indefatigably positive outlook. It was a free country, after all. But somehow my optimism always struck the
wrong note.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons