Quotes About Reflection

Se sarbatoreste ziua tatilor. Inainte de accident, nu simteam nevoia sa trecem in calendarul nostru si aceasta intalnire fortata, dar, acum, petrecem impreuna toata ziua asta simbolica poate tocmai pentru a demonstra ca o caricatura, o umbra, o frantura de tata ramane, totusi, un tata".

Her purse is half open, and I see a hotel room key, a metro ticket, and a hundred-franc note folded in four, like objects brought back by a space probe sent to earth to study how earthlings live, travel, and trade with one another. The sight leaves me pensive and confused. Does the cosmos contain keys for opening up my diving bell? A subway line with no terminus? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back? We must keep looking. I'll be off now.

Wind begins to whip up the sand. The tide has gone out so far that swimmers look like tiny dots on the horizon. The children run to stretch their legs on the beach once more before leaving, and Sylvie and I remain alone and silent, her hand squeezing my inert fingers. Behind dark glasses that reflect a flawless sky, she softly weeps over our shattered lives.

Sunday. I contemplate my books, piled up on the windowsill to constitute a small library: a rather useless one, for today no one will come to read them for me. Seneca, Zola, Chateaubriand, and Valery Larbaud are right there, three feet away, just out of reach. A very black fly settles on my nose. I waggle my head to unseat him. He digs in. Olympic wrestling is child's play compared to this. Sunday.

Have you all forgotten that I am Henry's spawn? And Anne Boleyn's . . . a name that does not pass my lips, but is forever on my mind? Who can doubt the courage of a woman who faced the ax by lifting up her long hair with a smile?

When those who lived through the epidemic tried to describe it, they talked about the sudden eerie quiet.

Garden season deepened. The lantern flies winked and blinked. Poppies flaunted their scarlet robes. Ants feasted in the peonies, and protected them from invaders. The pear tree blossomed. Lavender sensed her mother's presence, just past the first layer of fragrant air. In the parlor, the harp stood, silent, as before. But its silence didn't grieve Lavender. Its magic had wintered her through part of the journey that brought her to where she was now.

I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line.

As your lover describes you, so you are.

I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.

When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.

The unthought hurts because we're comfortable in what's already thought.

The mind is an activity, not a repository.

There's a blessing in the moments after terror and before confirmation.

Now and again when a book moved her, when a book opened a previously undiscovered window in her mind and forever altered her perception of the world, she would add it to those secret ranks.

She doesn't rebuke herself for thinking it; she does herself the small kindness of forgiving her malfunctioning logic.

And she'd believed, truly, that Javier wouldn't hurt them. What she wouldn't give to go back to that moment with Sebastián, to say anything else.

He can prolong the moment of irrational hope that maybe some sliver of yesterday's world is still intact.

Now and again when a book moved her, when a book opened a previously undiscovered window in her mind and forever altered her perception of the world, she would add it to those secret ranks. Once in

It's all a romantic dream now. It's over. I made my choices long ago, and this is where they've led me.

searches her gauzy memories, but it's no use. She can't remember why, and it doesn't matter anyway.

Marta's death changed everything, of course. It changed everything.

Trauma waits for stillness.

She slams the trunk, walks back to the front seat to select one of his notebooks, not yet allowing herself to consider the reason she does this—to retain a personal record of his extinct handwriting.