The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.

If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.

I feel I stand in a desert with my hands outstretched, and you are raining down upon me.

What was it to love someone, what was love exactly, and why did it end or not end? Those were the real questions, and who could answer them?

Then Carol slipped her arm under her neck, and all the length of their bodies touched, fitting as if something had prearranged it. Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh. She had a vision of a pale white flower, shimmering as if seen in darkness, or through water. Why did people talk of heaven, she wondered.

Some people ask, “Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?” Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general—but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human. For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem should acknowledge that.

How anyone could have read Gertrude Stein without reading any Joyce, Richard said, he didn't know.

Vil De være så snill å ta den andre billetten, sa han, og så går De i Burgtheater med meg ikveld og deler den fornøyelsen den er, denne perverse galskapen, min kjære Atzbacher, sa Reger, skriver Atzbacher. Ja, sa jeg til Reger, skriver Atzbacher, hvis det er Deres utrykkelige ønske, og Reger sa, ja, det er mitt utriykkelige ønske og gav meg den andre billetten. Om kvelden gikk jeg faktisk med Reger i Burgtheater og så Der zerbrochne Krug, skriver Atzbacher. Forestillingen var redselsfull.

Skjønt jeg først hadde avtalt å treffe Reger i Kunsthistorisk museum klokken halv tolv, var jeg der allerede halv elleve, for uforstyrret å kunne iaktta ham fra en mest mulig ideell synsvinkel, slik jeg allerede lenge hadde planlagt, skriver Atzbacher.

Nostalgia is so certain: the sense of familiarity it instills makes us feel like we know ourselves, like we've lived. To get a sense that we have already journeyed through something—survived it, experienced it—is often so much easier than the task of currently living through something. Though hard to grasp, nostalgia is elating to bask in—temporarily restoring color to the past. It creates a sense memory that momentarily simulates context. Nostalgia is recall without the criticism of the present day, all the good parts, memory without the pain. Finally, nostalgia asks so little of us, just to be noticed and revisited; it doesn't require the difficult task of negotiation, the heartache and uncertainty that the present does.