All That Man Is

“Yesterday he experienced a sort of dark afternoon of the soul. Some hours of terrible negativity. A sense, essentially, that he had wasted his entire life, and now it was over. The sun was shining outside.”

“It’s not a joke. Life is not a joke.”

“The passage of time. That is what is eternal, that is what has no end. And it shows itself only in the effect it has on everything else, so that everything else embodies, in its own impermanence, the one thing that never ends.”

“He likes it. The fairy-tale topography of the town. A make-believe world of walled gardens. The quietness of summer. The stone-floored lodge and the deferential porter. Yes, a make-believe world, like something imagined by a shy child.Somewhere to hide.Dreaming spires.”

“Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what have you had? I’m too old—too old at any rate for what I see. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. Still, we have the illusion of freedom; therefore don’t, like me to-day, be without the memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it, and now I’m a case of reaction against the mistake. Do what you like so long as you don’t make it. For it was a mistake. Live, live! He”

“Everything so settled, you see. It all happened a thousand years ago. And the medievalist sits in his study, in a shaft of sunlight, lost in a reverie of life on the far side of that immense lapse of time. The whole exercise is, in its way, a memento mori. A meditation on the effacing nature of time.”

“This might be your future.’ ‘Moguća budućnost.’ ‘A possible future.’ ‘Moguće,’ Vletka emphasises. ‘It is possible.’ Vletka starts on the final list, and her daughter says, still with a stupid smile on her face, ‘Solitude, introspection, stillness, quiet, seclusion, withdrawing from the world, silence, submission, meditation…”

“This is your present,’ the daughter says. ‘Upheaval, turbulence, plans destroyed, disorder, pride humbled, humiliation, violence even…’ His eyes narrowing, Murray unknits his fingers to find his cigarettes. The daughter says in her silly voice, ‘The destruction of a way of living. The impact of things over which you have no control. The final end of a… a part of your life. This is your present.”

“Upheaval, turbulence, plans destroyed, disorder, pride humbled, humiliation, violence even…”

“Materialism,’ she says, ‘acquiring material possessions, only interested in wealth, power, status, winning your share, and keeping what you have, ownership, jealousy, wanting to impose your will, denying weaknesses.”

“The day is windless. It’s not a joke. Life is not a joke.”

“He is aware of neglecting his son, of not even talking to him much, too preoccupied with his own stuff. His own plans. This is his life, these things that are happening.”

“Life has become so dense, these last years. There is so much happening. Thing after thing. So little space. In the thick of life now. Too near to see it.”

“It is like waking up from a nightmare, to find your life still there, as you left it. The sounds of the world, too, are there again.”

“She has another taste of her peach juice. She is drinking peach juice, though that does not necessarily mean anything – she is not a habitual drinker.”

“He is unable to imagine living more happily in the present.”

“Bernard is drunk. Quite how drunk, he didn’t understand until he went to the toilet – his shiny face in the mirror stared back at him with eerie impassivity, then suddenly put out its tongue.”

“See more of life? Life is everywhere – you don’t need to traipse around Europe looking for it…”

“There’s this feeling he sometimes has that he’s a long way from home. That nobody’s there for him if it all goes wrong.”

“Entro certi limiti, ormai si parlano. Eppure attraversare insieme l'ingresso al pianterreno, uscire insieme, camminare insieme per strada ha qualcosa di estremamente intimo.”

“I was an idiot. End of. Put that on my fucking tombstone”

“The whole appeal of medieval studies - the language, the literature, the history, the art and architecture - to immerse oneself in that world. That other world. Safely other. Other in almost every way, except that it was here. Look at those fields on either side of the motorway. Those low hills. It was here. They were here, as we are here now. And this too shall pass. We don't actually believe that, though, do we? We are unable to believe that our own world will pass. So it will go on for ever? No. It will turn into something else. Slowly - too slowly to be perceived by the people living in it. Which is already happening, is always happening. We just can't see it.”