I sometimes wonder why I pushed myself so relentlessly in weight lifting. My motive, I think, was not an uncommon one; I was not the ninety-eight-pound weakling of bodybuilding advertisements, but I was timid, diffident, insecure, submissive. I became strong—very strong—with all my weight lifting but found that this did nothing for my character, which remained exactly the same.
Здається, що я знаходжу правильний варіант, лише допустивши усі можливі помилки і вичерпавши всі хибні шляхи.
I once heard a radio program devoted to the memories and thoughts of those who, like me, had been evacuated during the Second World War, separated from their families during their earliest years. The interviewer commented on how well these people had adjusted to the painful, traumatic years of their childhood. “Yes,” said one man. “But I still have trouble with the three Bs: bonding, belonging, and believing.” I think this is also true, to some extent, for me.
He has one of the most spacious, thoughtful minds I have ever encountered, with a vast base of knowledge of every sort, but it is a base under continual questioning and scrutiny. (I have seen him suddenly stop in mid-sentence and say, “I no longer believe what I was about to say.”)
I am a storyteller, for better or for worse. I suspect that feeling for stories, for narrative, is a universal human disposition, going with our powers of language, consciousness of self, and autobiographical memory.
It was just as well that I had no foreknowledge of the future, for after that sweet birthday fling I was to спойлерhave no sex for the next thirty-five years.
...
Shortly after my seventy-fifth birthday in 2008, I met someone I liked.свернуть
While I took Richard Selig’s delicate disengagement (“I am not that way, but I appreciate your love and love you too, in my own way”) without feeling rebuffed or brokenhearted, Mel’s almost disgusted rejection affected me deeply, depriving me (so I felt) of all hope of a real love life, driving me inwards and downwards to seek whatever satisfactions I could find with drug-fueled fantasy and pleasure.
<...> я не очень хорошо умею хранить обещания: у меня от них все начинает чесаться.
- Если люди тебя дразнят, это значит, что они видят в тебе что-то, что их пугает. Что-то особенное, чего у них самих, возможно, нет и что сияет в тебе, словно драгоценный камень. ©
А в школе царила мисс Хлыстер, директриса, которая, судя по всему, явилась на свет из самого ада. Он не был уверен, что это ее точный адрес, но почтовый индекс определенно совпадал.