And so, at school, I became t...

And so, at school, I became the girl by the door: Odile who stands by herself. Never spoken to and seldom spoken of. Staring at nothing with eyes like carved wood, as motionless as an effigy. - P3

If I were to go west, I could find him, and watch him for a bit. He’d be in his early twenties on the other side of the mountains, and would have met my mother only recently, hanging out by the fountain in the Place du Bâtisseur. - P8

The truth was that he was not so much a vivid loss in my life as an abstract deficit, - P8

What I felt was a kind of thrilling sadness, something I have since experienced when looking out over other open spaces and lonely boundaries: an emotion that lives on the desolate edge of the known. - P9

And still it rose up from ins...

And still it rose up from inside him, his awful laughter, which was not laughter, while tears came down his face, and the surf kept pounding up over the rail, splashing onto the windows. - P190

Every day brought something new. On and on it went. Artie watched all these things, and he slowly understood that what he had felt the day of the election was true: His country was committing suicide. - P192

But then came that horrible heat wave in the beginning of June. They lost their power, and when Evie went upstairs she found Artie in his undershorts lying on the bed, his arms splayed out as though he was sunbathing, dead. - P200

Nobody was talking about it t...

Nobody was talking about it these days if you didn’t know whose side the other person was on. Everything, Artie sat forward as he realized this, everything in the world seemed to him to be filled with unspoken truths. - P185

All the things in the world that people did not know about one another. Even those very close to them. - P185

That he was finally beginning to understand the multitudinous aspect of people. He was amazed by it, really, now that he thought about it. In his study of history, he had learned about the leaders, and the various groups involved, but he had somehow missed this fact about every single person: that they held within themselves a vast, unknowable universe. - P185

[오늘의 한문장] The Things We Never Say

"Why don’t people ever say anything real?"
And now he knew why. Because to say anything real was to say things that nobody wanted to know. Or if they wanted to know, they would not care in the right way. Or even understand. It was a private thing, to be alive. He understood this now. - P182

It was very hard for Artie to...

It was very hard for Artie to articulate this to himself, but he felt it, increasingly, and it brought him a quiet satisfaction. - P159

A small shiver of chills went through Artie. Jesus, Dad, he thought. I wish I had known you. - P160

As Danny left the room he turned around and said to Artie, "You have a good Christmas as well." Artie said, "I’ll try."
And for those few seconds as they stood looking at each other—to Artie’s way of thinking—there was a real sense of communion between them. - P171