writing

As Sterne* says: “We don’t love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them.” Mon

The characters are poor dairy farmers. One morning the husband is too hung over to do the milking. His wife does it and when she has finished the cows are frightened by thunder and stampede, trampling her. She is also hooked severely in one leg. Her husband is asleep and does not hear her cry out. Finally she drags herself home and wakes him up. He

He followed the herd, like any dumb beast, vaguely realizing he was unhappy.

Anna Mikhailovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were kind-hearted, and because they—friends from childhood—had to think about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over … But those tears were pleasant to them both.

She smiles, showing her absence of teeth. Tarare realises that Pierette is the sort of thing a man is meant to protect.

That’s animals, same thing doesn’t happen to people does it? That’s gonna happen to me someday too? No, not me. I ain’t dying. I don’t care what they say, I ain’t dying. I’m not lying on my back under the ground in everlasting darkness. Not me. I’m not closing my eyes. If I close my eyes, I might not open them.

That’s all I think I ever wanted, to go my own way and maybe find some love here and there. Love, but not the now and forever kind with chains around your vagina and a short circuit in your brain. I’d rather be alone.

You may not think you remember a time before fire, Lozeau continues, grasping Bonfils’s shoulder as they walk. But your soul does. Children, raw and unreformed, innocents, remember it better. This is why they squall when they are left alone in darkness. Think about it, he says. Men huddled in the cold and the black of the cave mouth, while monsters