We live on the flat, on the level, and yet - and so - we aspire. Groundlings, we can sometimes reach as far as the gods. Some soar with art, others with religion; most with love. But when we soar, we can also crash. There are few soft landings. We may find ourselves bouncing across the ground with leg-fracting force, dragged towards some foreign railway line. Every love story is a potential grief story. If not at first, then later. If not for one, then for the other. Sometimes, for both.
Julian BarnesLife โฆ is a bit like reading. โฆ If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is there to your reading? Only that itโs yours. Similarly, why live your life? Because itโs yours. But what if such an answer becomes less and less convincing?
Julian BarnesLife isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure.
Julian Barnes