A second thought always followed the first, one mystery bred another: was everyone really as alive as she was? For example, did her sister really matter to herself, was she as valuable to herself as Briony was? Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony? Did her sister also have a real self concealed behind a breaking wave, and did she spend time thinking about it, with a finger held up to her face. Did everybody, including her father, Betty, Hardman? If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyones thoughts striving in equal importance and everyones claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance. - Atonement, by Ian McEwan
"Be to her virtues very kind, be to her faults a little blind."
-Matthew Prior
"So long everything!” he shouted, then he ran next door to Margot’s house.
“I’m moving,” he said.
“Where?” asked Margot.
“Two weeks away,” said Mitchell.
“Where is that?” asked Margot.
“It’s everywhere I will be after I walk for two weeks,” said Mitchell, “I have lived in the same place for a long time, it is time for me to go some place else.”
“No.” said Margot, “You have only lived next door for fifteen years.”
“Sixteen,” said Mitchell.
“Fifteen…sixteen, what’s the difference?” said Margot, “I want you to stay next door forever.”
“I can’t,” said Mitchell, ” I do not want to go wake up in the same old bed and eat breakfast in the same old kitchen. Every room in my house is the same old room, because I have lived there too long. "
She enjoyed him, she liked his company, needed his affection. But she knew that wasn’t love. She knew that if she explained this to anyone, they would call her callous, but she felt she wasn’t doing any harm, and she needed someone loving with whom to spend her nights. Francois filled this need when they were together. He knew he did not love her either, although he said he did. She felt that he had seen someone similar to himself in her, and that their relationship, such as it was, suited them both. She did not want to get involved with anyone - not deeply, anyway. Deep involvement brought pain and hurt to one party or the other, so she kept herself aloof from that.
"Be to her virtues very kind, be to her faults a little blind."
-Matthew Prior
"So long everything!” he shouted, then he ran next door to Margot’s house.
“I’m moving,” he said.
“Where?” asked Margot.
“Two weeks away,” said Mitchell.
“Where is that?” asked Margot.
“It’s everywhere I will be after I walk for two weeks,” said Mitchell, “I have lived in the same place for a long time, it is time for me to go some place else.”
“No.” said Margot, “You have only lived next door for fifteen years.”
“Sixteen,” said Mitchell.
“Fifteen…sixteen, what’s the difference?” said Margot, “I want you to stay next door forever.”
“I can’t,” said Mitchell, ” I do not want to go wake up in the same old bed and eat breakfast in the same old kitchen. Every room in my house is the same old room, because I have lived there too long. "
She enjoyed him, she liked his company, needed his affection. But she knew that wasn’t love. She knew that if she explained this to anyone, they would call her callous, but she felt she wasn’t doing any harm, and she needed someone loving with whom to spend her nights. Francois filled this need when they were together. He knew he did not love her either, although he said he did. She felt that he had seen someone similar to himself in her, and that their relationship, such as it was, suited them both. She did not want to get involved with anyone - not deeply, anyway. Deep involvement brought pain and hurt to one party or the other, so she kept herself aloof from that.
-The Lost Garden, Mary Stanley.
“That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.”
— Prozac Nation (Elizabeth Wurtzel)
“...I love him; and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton’s is as different as moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.”
Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights)
Many things––such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly––are done worst when we try hardest to do them.
— C.S. Lewis
