kindle notes

“You’re saying it doesn’t matter what happens?” I asked. “I’m saying it’s you who decides what matters,” he said.

His dreams and fantasies haunted him because he was so terrified of always having to imagine them and never getting to remember them.

“But in ancient times it was believed that every person was born with a guiding spirit, with a genius that attended them in their life. This spirit determined their essence and their qualities. If they had an exceptional talent, it was because of their genius. But with time this changed, and genius came to refer to the talent itself and not to the

“And that is what I’m saying to you. Mind your genius. Listen within and mind those things that come together in you and only in you.”

It’s like that with celebrities. Or at least it was with Claudia, Omar, Romy, Geraldine, even Alain. They all had a sixth sense, an understanding that the outside—their appearances and their images—belonged as much to the public as it did to them.

The significance of Penny’s news unsettled me. She was minding her genius. She was nurturing it and allowing it to blossom. In contrast, a married man was moving ever closer to the center of my life. She was pursuing a new dream; I was sinking deeper into an old one.

“The experience of a novel depends on the reader, who that person is and what they imagine in their mind. But the experience of a film depends on the director. Nothing is left to the viewer, and so a director must be intransigent.”

I remember that there was something lonely in the air. It was the feeling of having enough and of still wanting more, of being worried that the bone-deep sensation that still more awaited me out in the world would never, ever go away. Would I always be restless? Would I always feel like something was missing?

Leaving home can seem brave. You do it because you want to find out who you are. You rid yourself of everything familiar so you can uncover what is uniquely you. But what you don’t comprehend is that you can’t take yourself with you. If you do, then there you are—same you, different place. You have to let go; you have to leave yourself behind. You