lily mock

And maybe that was how it was supposed to be, how life unfolded when you lived it long enough. Joy and sadness were part of the package; the trick, perhaps, was to let yourself feel all of it, but to hold on to the joy just a little more tightly because you never knew when a strong heart could just give out.

If the only thing that differentiates us from animals is the fact that we hide to defecate, then being human rests on very little, I thought. I

Of course, I count. Every thirty days, I say to myself that a month has gone by, but those are mere words, they don’t really give me time.

She’d been hiding behind the camera, looking through glass, trying to find herself. But how could she? How could any woman know her own story until she knew her mother’s?

What could be more human than want and desire: the machinations of your body kicking in? (And what a strange thing we are forced to admit desire is, when seen at this distance.)

Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered? It’s like that Zen koan, the one about the tree falling in the woods. If no one heard it, did it happen? If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?

‘True, but I’ll know what you think, you’ll know what I think, and perhaps that will spark off a new idea, and then we’ll feel as if we’re behaving like human beings rather than robots.’

what does having lived mean once you are no longer alive?

It is human to be afraid of death, of unimaginable pain, and it’s another kind of humanity to transcend it.