S.J. Watson

“I wonder what I would find if I could go back and decipher the layers, if it were possible to delve into my past that way, but realize that, even if it were possible, it would be futile.”

“There were never going to be any happy endings for me. I know that now. But that is all right.”

“Ich fühlte mich auf einmal wie betäubt. Alles wich zurück, bis in mir nur noch Schmerz übrigblieb und sonst nichts. Schmerz. Auf einen einzigen Punkt konzentriert.”

“Men always say I LOVE YOU as a QUESTION”

“I am sliding, down,down. Toward blackness, I must not sleep. I must not sleep.I.Must.Not.Sleep.”

“He put his hand on mine. I fell into him, knowing what he would do, what he must do, and he did. He opened his arms and held me, and I let him embrace me. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”

“Progress? You call this progress?” I was almost shouting now, anger spilled out of me as if I could no longer contain it. “If that’s what it is, then I don’t know if I want it.” The tears were flooding now, uncontrollable. “I don’t want it!” I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless.”

“I am an adult, but a damaged one.”

“I couldn't imagine how i would get from here to there. i couldn't imagine living through a whole string of identical days.”

“I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless. I didn't feel ashamed.”

“I closed my eyes and he kissed my eyelids, barely brushing them with his lips. I felt safe, at home. I felt as if here, against his body, was the only place in which I belonged. The only place I had ever wanted to be. We lay in silence for a while, holding each other, our skin merging, our breathing synchronized. I felt as if silence might allow the moment to last for ever, which would still not be enough.”

“Is it possible to both want and not want something at the same time? For desire to ride with fear?”

“This is dying everyday. Over and over.”

“Do you trust me?The question is usually asked before an admission that such trust is misplaced.”

“Whatever enjoyment I might have had at the time would disappear overnight like snow melting on a warm roof.”

“And then, when there is nothing else between us but love, we can begin to find a way to truly be together.”

“To create myself from nothing.”

“There are memories I am better off without. Things better lost forever.”

“…I feel like he’s taking advantage of me. Advantage of my illness. He thinks he can rewrite history in any way that he likes and I will never know, never be any the wiser. But I do know. I know exactly what he’s doing. And so I don’t trust him. In the end he is pushing me away, Dr. Nash. Ruining everything.”

“There was a letter, tucked among the pictures. It was addressed to Santa Claus and written in blue crayon. The jerky letters danced across the page. He wanted a bike, he said, or a puppy, and promised to be good. It was signed, and he had added his age. Four.I do not know why, but as I read it, my world seemed to collapse. Grief exploded in my chest like a grenade. I had been feeling calm - not happy, not even resigned, but calm - and that serenity vanished, as if vaporized. Beneath it, I was raw.”

“I cannot imagine how I will cope when I discover that my life is behind me, has already happened, and I have nothing to show for it. No treasure house of collection, no wealth of experience, no accumulated wisdom to pass on. What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?”

“Thoughts race, as if, in a mind devoid of memory, each idea has too much space to grow and move, to collide with others in a shower of sparks before spinning off into its own distance.”

“It's so difficult, isn't it? To see what's going on when you're in the absolute middle of something? It's only with hindsight we can see things for what they are.”

“What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?”

“كل ما استطعت فعله أنني أخذت أراقب بعجز بينما راحت تلك الذكريات تمر أمام عيني مسرعة ثم تختفي بسرعة كما ظهرت.”

“En la agenda escribí que era como estar muerta, pero ¿esto? Esto es peor. Tengo la sensación de morir cada día. Necesito sentir que estoy progresando. No puedo imaginarme continuando así mucho más tiempo. Sé que esta noche me dormiré y mañana me despertaré de nuevo sin saber nada, y pasado mañana, y al otro, todos los días de mi vida. No me lo puedo imaginar. No puedo afrontarlo. Esto no es vida, es solo una existencia, saltar de un momento al siguiente ignorando el pasado y sin planes para el futuro. Lo peor de todo es que ni siquiera sé qué no sé. Puede que haya muchas cosas esperando a hacerme daño. Cosas que ni siquiera soy capaz de imaginar.”

“La dejé en el suelo, delante de mí. Y empecé a dudar. No sabía qué quería hacer, si abrirla o no. ¿Qué nuevas sorpresas podría esconder? Puede que, como la memoria misma, contuviera verdades que no podía ni empezar a imaginar. Sueños reales, horrores inesperados. Me invadió el miedo. Pero estas verdades, me dije, son todo lo que tengo. Son mi pasado. Son lo que me hace humana. Sin ellas no soy nada. Solo un animal.”

“I step back further, until I feel cold tiles against my back. It is then I get the glimmer that I associate with memory. As my mind tries to settle on it, it flutters away, like ashes caught in a breeze, and I realize that in my life there is a then, a before, though before what I cannot say, and there is a now, and there is nothing between the two but a long, silent emptiness that has led me here, to me and him, in this house.”

“I will never abandon you. I love you too much.”

“I want him to be happy. And I want you to be happy, too. Even if you can only find that happiness without me.”

“He forgave you though,' said Claire. 'He never held it against you, ever. All he cared about was that you lived, and that you got better. He would have given everything for that. Everything. Nothing else mattered.”

“I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd fought for you. I was weak and stupid.”

“We’re constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves something happened often enough we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it.”