«Уроки дыхания» kitabından alıntılar, sayfa 3

Ты можешь менять мужей, но не свое положение в мире. Менять кого-то, но не что-то. Все мы носимся здесь по кругу, думала она, и представляла себе мир как маленькую синюю чашку, вращающуюся, подобно аттракциону, где каждый человек сидит, пришпиленный к своему месту центробежной силой.

быть, тут просто зависть – обремененный обязанностями, скованный ими человек

Ты женат на этой женщине пятьдесят с хвостиком лет, – сказал Ламонт, – и половину их вы с ней из-за чего-то грызетесь. То она с тобой не разговаривает, то ты с ней. То она от тебя уходит, то ты от нее. Черт подери, старик, в конце концов вы оба уйдете и оставите дом пустым.

"It's just time to marry, that's all," she said. "I'm so tired of dating! I'm so tired of keeping up a good front! I want to sit on the couch with a regular, normal husband and watch TV for a thousand years. It's going to be like getting out of a girdle; that's exactly how I picture it."

Укрытая вуалью щека Шугар была гладкой и тугой. Она оставляла ощущение одной из тех луковиц, что продают упакованными в сетку в продуктовых магазинах.

'I refuse to believe that I will die unkonwn', he said to Ira once, and Ira, instead of smiling tolerantly as he should have, had felt slapped in the face.

All those things we used to promise ourselves we'd never, ever do when we grew up. We promised we wouldn't mince when we walked barefoot. We promised we wouldn't lie out on the beach tanning instead of swimming, or swimming with our chins high so we don't wet our hairdos. We promised we wouldn't wash the dishes right after supper because that would take us away from our husbands.

There was an old man in Maggie's nursing home who believed that once he reached heaven, all he had lost in his lifetime would be given back to him. "Oh, yes, what a good idea!" Maggie had said when he told her about it. She had assumed he meant intangibles youthful energy, for instance, or that ability young people have to get swept away and impassioned. But then as he went on talking she saw that he had something more concrete in mind. At the Pearly Gates, he said, Saint Peter would hand everything to him in a gunnysack: The little red sweater his mother had knit him just before she died, that he had left on a bus in fourth grade and missed with all his heart ever since. The special pocketknife his older brother had flung into a cornfield out of spite. The diamond ring his first sweetheart had failed to return to him when she broke off their engagement and ran away with the minister's son.

"When you've been married only six weeks everything is still perfect.''

And later it is not, was her implication. Which Maggie couldn't argue with. Still, it saddened her to realize they all took such a thing for granted.

He was lonely and tired and lacking in hope and his son had not turned out well and his daughter didn't think much of him, and he still couldn't figure where he had gone wrong.