Less (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): A Novel (The Arthur Less Books Book 1)

We all recognize grief in moments that should be celebrations; it is the salt in the pudding.

the time when any couple has found its balance, and passion has quieted from its early scream, but gratitude is still abundant; what no one realizes are the golden years.

Strange, though; because he is afraid of everything, nothing is harder than anything else. Taking a trip around the world is no more terrifying than buying a stick of gum. The daily dose of courage.

Don’t little children, awakened one morning and told, “Now you’re five!”—don’t they wail at the universe’s descent into chaos? The sun slowly dying, the spiral arm spreading, the molecules drifting apart second by second toward our inevitable heat death—shouldn’t we all wail to the stars?

We all recognize grief in moments that should be celebrations; it is the salt in the pudding.

Do they sleep under this most excellent canopy, this majestical roof, this amazing mirrored coverlet, the stars? Look, you: there are enough stars for everyone tonight, and among them shine the satellites, those counterfeit coins. He reaches for, but does not catch, a falling star.

Why have these memories been brought out again, here in Japan—the orange scarf, the garden—like a yard sale of his life? Has he lost his mind, or is everything a reflection? The butter bean, the mugwort, the scarf, the garden; is this not a window but a mirror? Two birds are quarreling in the fountain. Again, as he did as a boy, he can only look on

There was a room of carvings by Gauguin. And one said: Be mysterious. And the other one said: Be in love, you will be happy.

Says the bravest person I know: “I can’t.”