What are the politics of boredom?
I scowled at the world. And the world scowled back. We were locked in a stare of mutual disgust.
I read differently now, more painstakingly, knowing I am probably revisiting the books I love for the last time. (245)
Alone in my room, wrapped in a blanket, I whimpered and talked aloud to myself, recalling the lost glory of my youth when I considered myself, and was considered by others, a bright and capable person. It seemed that was all gone now.
There was no one to call me to bed, no one to demand that the rhythms of my life operate in a duet.
I wished to punish her for her intolerable stoicism, which made it impossible for me to ever be truly needed by her in the most profound ways a person can need another, a need that often goes by the name of love.
The fact that you got a little happier today doesn't change the fact that you also became a little sadder. Every day you become a little more of both, which means that right now, at this exact moment, you're the happiest and saddest you've ever been in your whole life.
When I began writing these pages I believed their subject to be children, the ones we have and the ones we wish we had, the ways in which we depend on our children to depend on us, the ways in which we encourage them to remain children, the ways in which they remain more unknown to us than they do to their more casual acquaintances; the ways in which we remain equally opaque to them.
When I was young, I wanted to do something more low-key, like become a drummer in a rock band.
I have no fears when it comes to my hair or clothes.
Getting emotional about things is a peacetime luxury. In wartime, it's much too painful.