Sorrow and Bliss: A Novel

“Nostos, Martha, returning home. Algos, pain. Nostalgia is the suffering caused by our unappeased yearning to return.” Whether or not, he said, the home we long for ever existed.

“First novels are autobiography and wish fulfillment. Evidently, one’s got to push all one’s disappointments and unmet desires through the pipes before one can write anything useful.” I

It was not enough to be extraordinary to the three of us.

“Surely the only time one needs one’s blood effervesced is when life is utterly flat.”

“I am not being whimsical, Martha. Short another, beauty is a reason to live.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, @author_quotes_daily. The caption said, “What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.”

“Martha,” he said afterwards, lying next to me. “Everything is broken and messed up and completely fine. That is what life is. It’s only the ratios that change. Usually on their own. As soon as you think that’s it, it’s going to be like this forever, they change again.”

don’t know,” she said. “Just by focusing on—or doing practical things and pretending to enjoy them until I sort of do enjoy them or can’t remember what I enjoyed before.”

“Everything is broken and messed up and completely fine. That is what life is. It’s only the ratios that change. Usually on their own. As soon as you think that’s it, it’s going to be like this forever, they change again.”