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¡°Being one of four sisters always felt like being part of something magic.¡±

¡°Being one of four sisters always felt like being part of something magic.¡±

¡°Their family had always been good at hellos and goodbyes, moments ending even as they began. It was easy to love someone in the beginnings and endings; it was all the time in between that was so hard.¡±

¡°She was home, the only one she knew, not because she always lived in it, but because it always lived in her.¡±

¡°Isn¡¯t that what life is about? Forging forward with the answer you have ¨C stumbling along the way and picking yourself up ¨C only to one day realise t

¡°Isn¡¯t that what life is about? Forging forward with the answer you have ¨C stumbling along the way and picking yourself up ¨C only to one day realise that the answer you¡¯ve held on to for a long time is not the right one . When that happens, it¡¯s time to look for the next answer. That¡¯s how ordinary folks, like herself, live. Over our life span, the right answer will keep changing.¡±

¡°Running an independent bookshop was like roaming a stretch of land without roads. There was no tried-and-tested business model. Bookshop owners live day by day, hesitant to plan too far ahead .¡±

¡°A curious feeling swept over her. The feeling of being accepted.¡±

¡°Because it¡¯s our first life, worries are aplenty, and anxiety, too. Because it¡¯s our first life, it¡¯s precious. Because it¡¯s our first life, nobody knows what¡¯ll happen even in five minutes.¡±

¡°All of you should find something you enjoy doing, something that makes you excited. Instead of pursuing what is recognised and valued by society, do what you like. If you can find it, you¡¯ll not waver easily, no matter what others think. Be brave.¡±

¡°That this was the trade-off. The price of happiness. In order to

¡°That this was the trade-off. The price of happiness. In order to feel happy he had to feel everything.¡±

¡°He didn¡¯t want to die, he just wanted to stop, to cease, sit down. Maybe just sleep, for a year or maybe forever.¡±

¡°Boy meets girl at a wedding and the world ends. The classic meetcute.¡±

¡°He wondered why he always seemed destined to be slightly too far ahead or too far behind his own life.¡±

¡°Emory couldn¡¯t imagine what it felt like to inhabit space you truly owned. Cities were hostile to anyone who couldn¡¯t count on the split rent and utilities of partnership. Being one person was more expensive than she had been taught to anticipate.¡±

¡°He wondered if a love not properly expressed mutated into something jagged and unwieldy like metal, something that could kill you.¡±

¡°Ellwood smiled, and a sudden, dry bleakness spread over Gaunt¡¯s heart as he thought of Hercules, and Hector, and all the heroes in myth who found hap

¡°Ellwood smiled, and a sudden, dry bleakness spread over Gaunt¡¯s heart as he thought of Hercules, and Hector, and all the heroes in myth who found happiness briefly, only for it not to be the end of the story.¡±

¡°He went there in the mornings, sometimes, and gave himself to that strange country rapture, that deep, bonewarming feeling that England was his, and he was England¡¯s. He felt it as strongly as if his ancestors had been there a thousand years. Perhaps he felt it more strongly because they hadn¡¯t.¡±

¡°Ellwood¡¯s England was magical, thought Gaunt, picking his way around nettles. But it wasn¡¯t England.¡±

¡°It was the Hell you¡¯d feared in childhood, come to devour the children . It was treading over the corpses of your friends so that you might be killed yourself. It was the congealed evil of a century.¡±

¡°I wish I could be more articulate, but the English language fails me. It sometimes feels as if the only words that still have meaning are place names: Ypres, Mons, Artois. Nothing else expresses.¡±

¡°My dearest, darling Sidney, There was nothing else.¡±

¡°Gaunt was woven into everything he read, saw, wrote, did, dreamt. Every poem had been written about him, every song composed for him, and Ellwood could not scrape his mind clean of him no matter how he tried. He thought perhaps all the pain would sour the love, but instead it drew him further in, as if he were Marc Antony, falling on his own sword. And it was a magical thing, to love someone so much; it was a feeling so strange and slippery, like a sheath of fabric cut from the sky.¡±

¡°Ellwood was surprised to find that he was not glad either, although his hatred grew and grew. But he could not hate soldiers. He longed to destroy, to hurt, to kill, but he wasn¡¯t sure whom. Possibly the civilians.¡±

¡°Ellwood had never been interested in ugliness, whereas Gaunt [¡­] feared that ugliness was too important to ignore..¡±

¡°How alive it all seemed, and how gracious¡ªto die in an era when your death bought you a brief moment at the centre of something. To be important, rather than one of millions.¡±

¡°It was a common conversation. In 1913, you might ask a new acquaintance where he had gone to school, or what he did for a living. In 1916, it was this: what part of yourself did you most fear losing?¡±

¡°He did not know that it was the first thing homesick little boys in their dormitories learnt at boarding school: how to cry in silence.¡±

¡°It will hurt. It already hurts. Everything fucking hurts, and still we are bigger than our tra

¡°It will hurt. It already hurts. Everything fucking hurts, and still we are bigger than our tragedy. We are not deviant, we are exultant. We are on top of the world. We are bigger than our tragedies.¡±

¡°It didn¡¯t feel like anything to me,¡± he says. ¡°I don¡¯t feel anything anymore.¡±

¡°Languages aren¡¯t just made of words. They¡¯re modes of looking at the world. They¡¯re the keys

¡°Languages aren¡¯t just made of words. They¡¯re modes of looking at the world. They¡¯re the keys to civilization. And that¡¯s knowledge worth killing for.¡±

¡°They¡¯d been chosen for privileges they couldn¡¯t have ever imagined, funded by powerful and wealthy men whose motives they did not fully understand, and they were acutely aware these could be lost at any moment. That precariousness made them simultaneously bold and terrified. They had the keys to the kingdom; they did not want to give them¡±

¡°[This] circle of people he loved so fiercely his chest hurt when he thought about them. A family. He felt a crush of guilt then for loving them, and Oxford, as much as he did. He adored it here; he really did. For all the daily slights he suffered, walking through campus delighted him.¡±

¡°He hated this place. He loved it. He resented how it treated him. He still wanted to be a part of it ¨C because it felt so good to be a part of it, to speak to its professors as an intellectual equal, to be in on the great game.¡±

¡°In Classical Chinese, the characters ¶þÐÄ referred to disloyal or traitorous intentions; literally, they translated as ¡®two hearts¡¯. And Robin found himself in the impossible position of loving that which he betrayed, twice.¡±

¡®How strange,¡¯ said Ramy. ¡®To love the stuff and the language, but to hate the country.¡¯
¡®Not as odd as you¡¯d think,¡¯ said Victoire. ¡®There are people, after all, and then there are things.¡¯

¡°Yet didn¡¯t he have a right to be happy? He had never felt such warmth in his chest until now, had never looked forward to getting up in the morning as he did now. Babel, his friends, and Oxford ¨C they had unlocked a part of him, a place of sunshine and belonging, that he never thought he¡¯d feel again. The world felt less dark now. He was a child starved of affection, which he now had in abundance ¨C and was it so wrong for him to cling to what he had? He was not ready to commit fully to Hermes. But by God, he would have killed for any of his cohort.¡±

¡°Our friendships started with ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡± The answer carried with it looks that I can

¡°Our friendships started with ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡± The answer carried with it looks that I can still see clearly: Stacia¡¯s begged me not to talk to her, and Tonya¡¯s asked, ¡°Is she talking to me?!¡± We got past those facial expressions and gave our names. Names that sound like heartbeats: Fe Fe, Precious, Stacia, Tonya.¡±

¡°We were so different, but everybody loved them some double Dutch. Sometimes we made a tight-knit crew; other days we couldn¡¯t get along for nothing.¡±

¡°That summer, one by one, they dropped out of sight as if we were in a game of All in Together.¡±

¡°Was this the decisive moment of my life? It felt as if the gap th

¡°Was this the decisive moment of my life? It felt as if the gap that had dogged me all my days was knitting together before my eyes¡ªso that, from this point on, my life would be as coherent and meaningful as my favorite books. At the same time, I had a powerful sense of having escaped something: of having finally stepped outside the script.¡±

There was something abstract and gentle about the experience of being ignored¡ªa feeling of being spared, a known impossibility of anything happening¡ªthat was consonant with my understanding of love.

¡°There was something about crying so much, the way it made my body so limp and hot and shuddering, that made me feel closer to sex. Maybe there was a line where sex and total sadness touched¡ªone of those surprising borders that turned out to exist, like the one between Italy and Slovenia. Music, too, was adjacent. It was like Trieste, which was Italian and Slovenian and also somehow Austrian.¡±

¡°It seemed to me that the elements whirling around me in my own life were also somehow held in place by Ivan¡¯s absence, or were there because of him¡ªto counterbalance a void.¡±

The one that started ¡°Days like this, I don¡¯t know what to do with myself¡± made me feel certain that I had spent my whole life not knowing what to do with myself¡ªall day, and all night. ¡°I wander the halls . . .¡± That was exactly it: not the streets, like a fl?neur, but the halls. Oh, I knew just which halls.

¡°It was the golden time of year. Every day the leaves grew brighter, the air sharper, the grass more brilliant. The sunsets seemed to expand and melt and stretch for hours, and the brick fa?ades glowed pink, and everything blue got bluer. How many perfect autumns did a person get? Why did I seem always to be in the wrong place, listening to the wrong music?¡±

¡°She had appeared so glorious to me that I had assumed she had everything she wanted. I wanted

¡°She had appeared so glorious to me that I had assumed she had everything she wanted. I wanted to cry for her, and for myself.¡±

¡°Secretly I thought to myself that Andr¨¦e was one of those prodigies about whom, later on, books would be written.¡±

¡°No, our friendship was not as important to Andr¨¦e as it was to me, but I admired her too much to suffer from it.¡±

¡°What would I have daydreamed about? I loved Andr¨¦e above all else, and she was right next to me.¡±

¡°I thought to myself, distressed, that in books there are people who make declarations of love, or hate, who dare to say whatever comes into their mind, or heart¡ªwhy is it so impossible to do the same thing in real life?¡±

¡°The errors I admitted were those of the soul above all: I had lacked fervour, too long forsaken the divine presence, prayed inattentively, regarded myself too complacently.¡±

¡°Andr¨¦e was unhappy and the idea of it was unbearable. But her unhappiness was so foreign to me; the kind of love where your kiss had no truth from me.¡±

¡°Never. The word had never fallen with such weight upon my heart. I repeated it within myself, under the never-ending sky, and I wanted to cry. ¡±

¡°No doubt she loved Andr¨¦e in her way, but what way was that? That was the question. We all loved her, only differently. ¡±

¡°Happiness suits her so well, I thought.¡±

¡°¡°Don¡¯t be sad,¡± she said. ¡°In every family there¡¯s a bit of rubbish. I was the rubbish.¡±

¡°For Andr¨¦e, there was a passageway between the heart and the body that remained a mystery to me. ¡±

¡°As it turned out, Sooki and I needed the same thing: to find someone who could see u

¡°As it turned out, Sooki and I needed the same thing: to find someone who could see us as our best and most complete selves. Astonishing to come across such a friendship at this point in life. At any point in life.¡±

¡°Fear and hatred, fear and hatred: often, it seemed that those were the only two qualities he

¡°Fear and hatred, fear and hatred: often, it seemed that those were the only two qualities he possessed. Fear of everyone else; hatred of himself.¡±

¡°Fairness is for happy people, for people who have been lucky enough to have lived a life defined more by certainties than by ambiguities.¡±

¡°Friendship was witnessing another¡¯s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person¡¯s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.¡±

¡°I want to be alone,¡± he told him.
¡°I understand,¡± Willem said.
¡°We¡¯ll be alone together.¡±

¡°You have something of mine, I passed on something of me to you, and hopefully it isn¡¯t cursed

¡°You have something of mine, I passed on something of me to you, and hopefully it isn¡¯t cursed, I don¡¯t know if I can leave you something that isn¡¯t dirty, that isn¡¯t dark, our share of night¡±

¡°He also remembered his father¡¯s words, nothing can hurt you now, how long was now, how long did the present last?¡±

¡°There is no greater disappointment than to believe oneself the chosen one and not to be chosen.¡±

¡°I¡¯m going to miss him, he thought, I¡¯ll be glad when he¡¯s gone because without him it¡¯ll be easier to stop being sad, but I¡¯m going to miss him¡­¡±

¡°It had the look of a spot where something bad had happened: an expectant air. Evil places wait for evil things to reoccur, or else they seek it out.¡±

¡°There is no arguing with faith, though. And it¡¯s impossible to disbelieve when the Darkness comes. So, we trust, and we go on. At least, that¡¯s what many of us do.¡±

¡°Even wih all the hatred, contempt, ambivalence, and repulsion he felt towards the Order, that power was still his, and he didn¡¯t posses many things. Renunciations is easy when you have a lot, he thought. He had never had anything.¡±