by Jeffery Deaver
A physician's duty is not just to extend life, it is to end suffering.
-Dr Jack Kevorkian
'wild strawberry place'
A place that is special, the most special place there is.
A place where life is... an epiphany.
Like that very quiet room in the Kunsthistorisches Museum where the Vermeers are. Or that marvelous bit where the flute plays that golden music at the beginning of L'apres-midi d'un faune. The nave of the King's College chapel at Evensong. The place in the Prater behind the hunting lodge where the first scillas come in spring. The garden act of Figaro. The Lippizzaners doing a capriole, in the winter, when there's no one there.
This place, now... any place that they were together would be such a place, be it a railway station, a rainy street...
-From Magic Flutes by Eva Ibbotson
Love New Romantic by Laura Marling
If I tell you my opinion, I'm pretty sure you would listen. But then after you do listen, do you value my point of view? Or like a tissue you throw it to the side and forget that you ever used it. Leaving traces, but no memories. Pretty petty, and useless don't you think?
And so in that case it's better off if I don't say anything at all. Don't even think of saying what I'm thinking. Don't even share my paltry words.
Or better yet, don't pretend to hear the sound of my voice. Don't even pretend to care. Which heartache is worse for wear?
Or even worse my thoughts are air. Worse than rubbish, worse than crap. Does it come with no substance, no point, no use? Is it even worth spilling, worth thinking? Could I be a disgrace? A joke? A loon?
Cursing moments, cursing selves, cursing everything that has brought you to this place. Cursing the inelegence of your stumbling mouth. Cursing fate, cursing doom. Simply cussing.
Inane, inanimate objects are glorified to being more then they ever should be. How condescending the thought don't you think? Don't you agree?
(I don't mean anything by it at all. Honest.)
'...according to my observation of life, no woman, unless she be a freak, thinks with freedom.'
Again, like all women who have never known what it is to fall in love, she was sensible of a persistent yearning for something wholly undefined. There was nothing that she actually lacked, yet she seemed to lack everything.
'Time either flies like a bird or crawls like a snail.'
'Self surrender, you think, is an easy thing?'
'... seek the arms of Morpheus.'
'But you have brought me yourself,' she rejoined. 'And that is the best bringing of all.'
'... Yet a man will still become depressed, and yearn for company, even though he may curse it when he has got it.'
'Of course; but while the significant, and even the pseudo-significant -yes, the absolutely insignificant as well, -may be bearable, it is trifles, trifles that matter.'
... or surrender herself to the influence of that perfect restfulness which, known, probably, to everyone, comes of a silent, half-conscious contemplation of the great waves of life as they break for ever around and against us.
The man who has not seen such tears in the eyes of his beloved does not know the height of happiness to which, mingled with joy and gratitude and modesty, a woman can attain.
'I have tarried overlong in a sphere which is alien to my personality.'
