The Museum of Innocence (Vintage International)

It must have been then I first came to realize that for most people life was not a joy to be embraced with a full heart but a miserable charade to be endured with a false smile, a narrow path of lies, punishment, and repression.

There was still one part of my mind sound enough to see things clearly, and it was telling me that a chapter of my life was now coming to a close, but the greater part of me was still too anxious and fearful of being alone to let me accept this truth.

“Your problem is not that you’re in love with another woman—it’s that you are not in love with me.”

and on the few nights when we were moved to embrace, it was only in camaraderie and compassion.

I could not forget her.

The mere passage of time brought me none of the healing it seemed to offer everyone else. Despite Sibel’s tireless encouragement during our silent nights together (when all that could be heard was the gentle putter of a barge passing in the distance), we were both daunted by the awareness that my pain would not simply ebb away.

the ever elusive hope that I was beginning to recover. This hope gave me courage, and I began to dream—within pain, but gladly—that I could soon return to my former life, and that I would make love to Sibel, and that we would marry and begin a normal, happy married life. But these fantasies were short-lived; before a day had passed, the old familia

It was a love fed not by sexual appetite but by a fierce compassion,

As always after drinking too much, I felt like my own ghost trying to take its first solo walk outside the body.