Bokelskere.no

Det er alltid enklere å tro på det man allerede tror, enn å prøve å tenke annerledes

Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the good things you want from a person - sexual chemistry, let's say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty - and you get to pick three of those things. Three - that's it. Maybe four, if you're very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It's only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But this isn't the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That's real life. Don't you see it's a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you'll wind up with nothing.

And, of course, there is the person you come back to: his face and body and voice and sent and touch, his way of waiting until you finish whatever you're saying, no matter how lengthy, before he speaks, the way his smile moves so slowly across his face that it reminds you of moonrise, how clearly he has missed you and how clearly happy he is to have you back. Then there are the things, if you are particularly lucky, that this person has done for you while you're away: how in the pantry, in the freezer, in the refrigerator will be all the food you like to eat, the scotch you like to drink. There will be the sweater you thought you lost the previous year at the theatre, clean and folded and back on its shelf. There will be the shirt with its dangling buttons, but the buttons will be sewn back in place. There will be your mail stacked on one side of this desk; there will be a contract for an advertising campaign you're going to do in Germany for an Austrian beer, with his notes in the margin to discuss with your lawyer. And there will be no mention of it, and you will know that it was done with genuine pleasure, and you will know that part of the reason - a small part, but a part - you love being in this apartment and in this relationship is because this other person is always making a home for you, and that when you tell him this, he won't be offended but pleased, and you'll be glad, because you meant it with gratitude. And in these moments - almost a week back home - you will wonder why you leave so often, and you will wonder whether, after the next year's obligations are fulfilled, you ought not just stay there for a period, where you belong.

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 or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified. Friendship was witnessing another's slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honoured by the privilege of getting to be present for another person's most dismal moments, and knowing that you could bed dismal around him in return.

Before New York there had been law school, and before that, college, and before that, there was Philadelphia, and the long, slow trip across country, and before that, there was Montana, and the boys' home, and before Montana was the Southwest, and the motel rooms, and the lonely stretches of road and the hours spent in the car. And before that was South Dakota and the monastery. And before that? A father and a mother, presumably. Or, more realistically, simply a man and a woman. An then, probably, just a woman. And then him.

"Dear Jude," Harold wrote, "thank you for your beautiful (if unnecessary) note. I appreciate everything in it. You're right; that mug means a lot to me. But you mean more. So please stop torturing yourself.
"If I were a different kind of person, I might say that this whole incident is a metaphor for life in general: things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realise that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.
"Actually - maybe I am that kind of person after all.
"Love Harold."

...kjærligheten man føler til ett barn...er en helt spesiell kjærlighet, fordi det er en kjærlighet som ikke bunner i fysisk tiltrekning, i nytelse eller intellekt, men i frykt.

Jeg tror forskjellen ligger i at i jussen finnes det mange veier til så mange svar, mens det i matematikken finnes mange veier til ett eneste svar. Dessuten handler kanskje ikke jussen om sannhet, men om styring.

I sin sanneste form og bredeste forstand, er det kontrakter som styrer alle aspekter ved jussen.

Til tider følte presset for å lykkes nesten kvelende, som om lykke var noe alle burde og kunne oppnå, og at ethvert kompromiss i jakten på dette var noe man bare kunne laste seg selv for.