I feel so many things and I need to feel nothing at all

Wherever she went, wherver I went, there it would be, that shining twined string that stretched and pulled but never broke, our every movement reminding us of what we would never have again

On the other side are waves, tumuly, rainstorms, excitement: everything he cannot control, everything potentially awful and ecstatic, everything he has lived his adult life trying to avoid, everything whose absence bleeds his life of color

He and his friends have no children, and in their absence, the world sprawls before them, almost stifling in its possibilities. Without them, one's status as an adult is never secure; a childless adult creates adulthood for himself

He is so lonely that he sometimes feels it physically, a sodden clump of dirty laundry pressing against his chest

The first group feels sorry for him because they assume his singlehood is not his decision, but a state imposed upon him; and the second group feels a kind of hostility for him, because they think that singlehood is his decision, a defiant violation of a fundamental law of adulthood

He is not meant for a relationship and has never thought he was. He has never envied his friends theirs - to do so would be akin to a cat coveting a dog's bark: it is something that would never occur to him to envy, because it is impossible, something that is simply alien to his very species

His persistent nostalgia depressed him, aged him, and yet he couldn't stop feeling that the most glorious years, the years when everything seemed drawn in fluorescents, were gone

Why wasn't friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn't it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children og property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified

Fairness is for happy people, for people who have been lucky enough to have lived a life defined more by certainties than by ambiguities

The world becomes temporarily unberable

I felt something crumble inside me, like a tower of damp sand built to high

This whole incident is a metaphor for life in general: things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, someties wonderfully

Friendship was a series of exchanges: of affections, of time, sometimes of money, always of information

What was happiness but an extravagance, an impossible state to maintain

"The past was the only place she wanted to be"

"What growing up entailed (in life as in books) was a swift and inexplicable dwindling of character; out of a clear blue sky the heroes and heroines abandoned their adventures for some dull sweetheart, got married and had families, and generally started acting like a bunch of cows"

"Hun sier jeg må kjenne på tingene, ikke skyve dem unna, vet hun hvordan det vil gå, hvis jeg kjenner på tingene, kan hun vite at det ikke tar overhånd, all plassen, hele meg?"

"Jo, jeg kjenner av og til at det er like før jeg gråter, hvis jeg ikke stanset meg selv, ville jeg begynne å gråte, Hvis noe kommer uforvarende, plutselig på meg, hvis noen sier noe når jeg ikke er forberedt. Når jeg ikke har stengt, men går med små åpninger fordi jeg føler meg trygg og er avslappet, hender det ord kommer inn gjennom åpningene og treffer meg i hjertet. Det brenner bak ørene og tetter seg i halsen, det er like før jeg gråter, hvis jeg begynner klarer jeg kanskje ikke å stoppe."

There are so many things that we can't say, because they are too painful.