We all end up living secret lives. We create what we are willing to admire and admiring what we shouldn’t confess to the secret of our own sin, our own insufficiency, our own sadness. We all end up taking our secrets into the world and handing them over to strangers, only to realize it’s often too late to claim them back. The very nature of time passing is sad beyond words. memories mean they’re gone.
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
Inside the brain
Two memories that long had lain
Now quivered toward each other, lipped
Together, and together slipped;
And for a moment all was plain
That men have thought about in vain.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
One would never have guessed that the world had such a capacity for genuine grief. The most we can do is exploit our memories of his excellence.
—John Cheever (1912–1982)