Quotes from Daphne Kalotay

That there are only two things that really matter in life. Literature and love.

In fact, Drew herself had felt shaken, at the reality of those pictures, at their silent reminder - that the people we are closest to can disappear like that, even the people most rooted in our lives, the ones we think of as constant. They too, like Drew herself, would at some point exist merely in images - photographs, recollections.

She is shaking, nearly dizzy, alarmed by her own cruelty. It is the first time she has ever felt within herself something so awful - this enormous capacity for betrayal.

One needed, she saw now, only a few belongings, just as one needed only a few close friends, and a single passion - it need not be a person, neccissarily.

When I asked if she read poetry anymore, she said no. she had lost her taste for it. That was how she said it, lost her taste. I asked how that could happen, and she said she agreed with Plato, or at least Plato as summarized for her: that there was something dishonest about it and that he was right to want to banish the poets. What she mean't, she told me, was that the only reality was life, real life, and that these beautiful versions were lies and she no longer had patience for it.

Even now she felt the need to add, "At a certain point I realized that everyone has something like this." "What do you mean, 'like this'?" "Everyone has something they want but don't get to have.