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Well, I'm experienced heartbreak, and usually Elliot Perlman's Three Dollars is what I run to for comfort and realization
But this time, I find myself reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, I thought I'd share some lines that are popping out to me.
I'm sorry if some of these might have been posted before!
-When she woke up crying from one of her nightmares, the Kolker would stay with her, brush her hair with his hands, collect her tears in thimbles for her to drink the next morning "(The only way to overcome sadness is to consume it, he said),
-"They made love through the hole. The three lovers pressed against one another, but never fully touched. The Kolker kissed the wall, and Brod kissed the wall, but the selfish wall never kissed either back. The Kolker pressed his palms against the wall, and Brod, who turned her back to the wall to accommodate love, pressed the back of her thighs against the wall, but the wall remained indifferent, never acknowledging what they were trying so hard to do."(186)
-"She always saw through him, as if he were just another window. She always felt that she knew everything about him that could be known - not that he was simple, but that he was knowable, like a list of errands, like an encyclopedia."(169)
-"From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but a glow that could be mistaken for light-a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes."(151)
-He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.
But this time, I find myself reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, I thought I'd share some lines that are popping out to me.
I'm sorry if some of these might have been posted before!
-When she woke up crying from one of her nightmares, the Kolker would stay with her, brush her hair with his hands, collect her tears in thimbles for her to drink the next morning "(The only way to overcome sadness is to consume it, he said),
-"They made love through the hole. The three lovers pressed against one another, but never fully touched. The Kolker kissed the wall, and Brod kissed the wall, but the selfish wall never kissed either back. The Kolker pressed his palms against the wall, and Brod, who turned her back to the wall to accommodate love, pressed the back of her thighs against the wall, but the wall remained indifferent, never acknowledging what they were trying so hard to do."(186)
-"She always saw through him, as if he were just another window. She always felt that she knew everything about him that could be known - not that he was simple, but that he was knowable, like a list of errands, like an encyclopedia."(169)
-"From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but a glow that could be mistaken for light-a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes."(151)
-He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.
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