Quotes from Lawrence Raab

Every day / a few billion histories fail to occur.

We want to forget until we start to forget. from the poem Regret

I'd like to tell you not to be afraid, but I've lost my voice. I'm not used to all these legs, these claws, these feelers. It's the old story, predictable as fallout—the rearrangement of molecules. And everyone is surprised and no one understands why each man tries to kill the thing he loves, when the change comes over him. So now you know what I never found the time to say. Sweetheart, put down your flamethrower. You know I always loved you.

Then it's not the past I yearn for, but the idea of a time when everything important has not yet happened: — Lawrence Raab, from section 5 of "The Uses of Nostalgia," What We Don't Know About Each Other (Penguin, 1993)

Yet how ordinary so many strange things turn out to be, like dreams that end up disappointing us by making sense.