[b]Edward St. Aubyn
But then neither revenge nor forgiveness change what happened. They’re sideshows, of which forgiveness is the less attractive because it represents a collaboration with one’s persecutors.[/b]
On the other hand, you do what you have to do. All the rest is the sideshow.
Sometimes, when he was lying in bed, a single word like ‘fear’ or ‘infinity’ flicked the roof off the house and sucked him into the night, past the stars that had been bent into bears and ploughs, and into a pure darkness where everything was annihilated except the feeling of annihilation.
Let’s file this one under, “been there, done that.”
Nobody ever died of a feeling, he would say to himself, not believing a word of it, as he sweated his way through the feeling that he was dying of fear. People died of feelings all the time, once they had gone through the formality of materializing them into bullets and bottles and tumours.
Few things are trickier than emotions, right?
What was the thread that held together the scattered beads of experience if not the pressure of interpretation? The meaning of life was whatever meaning one could thrust down its reluctant throat.
On the other hand, steer clear of mine.
How could he think his way out of the problem when the problem was the way he thought…
He means me of course.
People think they are individuals because they use the word ‘‘I’’ so often.
The fools!