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One of the things he had learned in life, and which he hoped he could rely on, was that a greater pain drives out a lesser one. A strained muscle disa...more

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What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves - the music of our being - which is transformed by some into...more

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Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time.

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Remember the botched brothel-visit in L’Education sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the...more

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Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm, comfortab...more

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Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

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you find yourself repeating, ‘They grow up so quickly, don’t they?’ when all you really mean is: time goes faster for me nowadays.

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Is there anything more plausible than a second hand?

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...I need to return briefly to a few incidents that have grown into anecdotes, to some approximate memories which time has deformed into certainty.

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Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of me...more

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Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotion...more

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History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom a...more

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And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us of time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, ...more

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I remember, in no particular order:—a shiny inner wrist;—steam rising from a wet sink as a hot frying pan is laughingly tossed into it;—gouts of sperm...more