A storyteller

Some nice phrases from William Trevor (After Rain, post Reading Turgenev):

Fragments make up a life, my dear (My house in Cumbria)

Breaking the monotony of a silence that had gathered (Timothy's birthday)

Dear Life

Finished Alice Munro's Dear Life. Reminded me of why I love literature so deeply. Will read it again. Three barely-fitting analogies but they will have to do after a long day:
1. An onion. You peel one layer after another and at the end, you wonder if you have reached the core.
2. A tombstone. You read the engraved words and you get the gist of a life, but then you start thinking about what has been left out.
3. A river. You follow its meandering, and at some point, you stop, but it continues to flow.

A line

There is the funeral, and then the lovers lie together. (Reading Turgenev, William Trevor)
- One of the best lines I have read in recent times.

Hope, faith and love

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. 

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. 

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. 

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.” 
― Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History