He said something interesting: he said that he thinks there is only free will when you are in time, in the present. He says in the past we can only do what we did, and we can only be there if we were there.
Audrey NiffeneggerWhen somebody is that patient, you have to feel grateful, and then you want to hurt them. Does that make any sense?
Audrey NiffeneggerEvery minute of his life since then has been marked by her absence, every action has lacked dimension because she is not there to measure against. And when I was young I didn't understand, but now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.
Audrey NiffeneggerDo you ever miss him? Every day. Every minute. Every minute, she says. Yes, it's that way, isn't it?
Audrey NiffeneggerMom had just gotten back from Sydney, and she had brought me an immense, surpassingly blue butterfly, Papilio ulysses, mounted in a frame filled with cotton. I would hold it close to my face, so close I couldn't see anything but that blue. It would fill me with a feeling, a feeling I later tried to duplicate with alcohol and finally found again with Clare, a feeling of unity, oblivion, mindlessness in the best sense of the word.
Audrey Niffenegger