Wilful disregard, Lena Andersson
- Depair was too big a word, because he was a reserved type, even to himself, but not many sizes too big
- The human of all humans could not be designated, they said, without turning out to be a white, European, middle-class man. The chair of all chairs did not exist because it was Western and from a particular era. And the body he spoke of was proto-fascist.
- No reply was forthcoming, only a crushing anxiety. It intensified as day succeeded day and she heard nothing from him. Her shame at having exposed herself and received no response completely ruined what remained of the holiday period, eating further and further into her nerves. She could not concentrate, told herself to give up, never to care about him or anyone else again, because she could not go on like this. She did not want him! He would be banished from her life! ... Two short sentences and all her anxiety evaporated.
- She longed for the clarity that only physical consummation can bring. -The girlfriend chorus
- A fleeting whiff of something wonderful is harder to bear than nothing at all. Hugo's re-entry into her existence sabotage in a few seconds her months of work on alleviating her symptoms. The itch was back and she started trying to reach him anew, convinced that nothing comes to anyone who fails to make an effort. And he answered. Everything intensified and came flooding back. Whatever had been lying at rest in her body arose intact and resumed its dominion. The hours once again grew long and full of waiting, and everything besides contact with him was meaningless, which meant that most things were meaningless because the contact was scanty and sporadic.
- She could see with crystalline clarity that her behaviour was absurd and put the blame on him: if only he had not got in touch that futile way in September, if only he had left her in peace. IT is the stronger party, the one who wants least, who has to hold their impulses in check...
- Esta often went to the cinema that summer. Fled to the temple of those who were too timid for life, the domain of the troglodytes. One afternoon she saw Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. Afterwards she wanted to talk to Hugo about it. She wanted to talk to Hugo about everything but particularly this film
- a new sound came into the leaves, a forgotten nip into the air. It was autumn sending out an experimental feeler. Finally, licentious summer shaded into the time of disciplining and retreat
-The physicists' problem: That we don't remember things that have not yet happened. The philosophers' problem: That we remember something merely because it has happened. The psychologists' problem: That we remember what suits us. The politician's problem: That people have a memory. The medics' problem: That memory fails us. The unhappy lovers' problem: That the memory of what has happened alters us.
Books; A Love Story by Jan Myrdal, Lili Brik and Mayakovsky
The jilter never feels the need to talk. She, if anyone, should have known that the one walking away feels no pain; the one walking away does not need to talk because they have nothing to talk about. The one leaving is through with it. It's the one left behind who needs to talk for an eternity. ... There's no point talking. Honest answers are never forthcoming, to show consideration. One betrays and is betrayed and there's nothing to talk about because there are no obligations when the will is not to hand.
- Hope has to be starved to death if it is not to beguile and bedazzle its host. Hope can only be killed by the brutality of clarity. Hope is cruel because it binds and entraps. When the parasite Hope is taken from its carrier the Host, the carrier either dies or is set free.