The Book of Two Ways

Maybe this is all love is: twin routes of pain and pleasure. Maybe the miracle isn’t where we wind up, but that we get there at all.

Everything that can happen does happen—in another life.

There’s an ancient text, the story of Sinuhe, who flees his native country. When he leaves Egypt, he says, My heart is not in my body. To the Ancient Egyptians, for whom the heart was the site of intellect and emotion and faith, it was the same as saying: I have lost my mind.
Whatever happens, whatever I gain, it is going to be tempered by loss.
My heart is not in my body, I think.

“Home isn’t a where, Olive. It’s a who.”

WHEN YOU LOSE someone you love, there is a tear in the fabric of the universe. It’s the scar you feel for, the flaw you can’t stop seeing. It’s the tender place that won’t bear weight. It’s a void.

When you fall in love, it’s because you find someone who fills all your empty spaces.
When you fall out of love, it’s because you realize that you’re both broken.

It’s like I’ve opened Pandora’s box…inside my mind. I can’t unsee it.”
“Unsee what?”
“What my life might have been.”

Amsterdam, if you have no one to survive you, a poet is hired to write and read a few lines at your funeral; this is obviously not the case in America. Thalia hired me so that she would not have to die alone.

“I’ve been trying to figure out what this disease is teaching me,” she says slowly.
“About death?”
“No. About life.”

Everyone’s surprised by death, which is kind of ridiculous, when you think about it. It’s not exactly a spoiler. But I think that what really shocked me is how many people can’t see the shape of the life they’ve lived until they get to the very end of it. You know?