Book: How to Be Good
Quotes of Book: How to Be Good
Are o cronica lunara de carte intr-o revista de fitnes pentru barbati si in consecinta este, probabil, cel mai putin citit critic literar din lume. Bineinteles, mai scrie si altceva - din fericire, nu un roman, ci un scenariu, asa ca David poate sa-si exprime compasiunea in loc sa se simta amenintat - , iar impreuna cei doi pot {sau ar putea} sa-si bata joc fericiti atat de filmele groaznice pe care le-au vazut, cat si de romanele cumplite pe care le-au citit, moment in care bataia de joc se transforma ca prin minune in sprijin reciproc, camaraderesc, incetand sa fie doar dezagreabila. book-quoteWhat you don't ever catch a glimpse of on your wedding day - because how could you? - is that some days you will hate your spouse, that you will look at him and regret ever changing a word with him, let alone a ring and bodily fluids. Nor is it possible to foresee the desperation and depression, that sense that your life is over, the occasional urge to hit your whining child, even though hitting them is something you knew for a fact you would never ever do. And of course you don't think about having affairs, and when you get to that stage in life when you do {and everyone gets there sooner or later}, you don't think of the sick feeling you get in your stomach when you're conducting them, their inherent unhappiness. And nor do you think about your husband waking up in the morning being someone you don't recognize. If anyone thought about any of these things, then no one would ever get married, of course they wouldn't; in fact, the impulse to marry would come from the same place as the same impulse to drink a bottle of bleach, and those are the kinds of impulses we try to ignore, rather than celebrate. So we can't afford to think of these things because getting married - or finding a partner whom we will want to spend our lives with and have children by - is on our agenda. It's something we know we will do one day, and if you take that away from us then we are left with promotions at work and the possibility of a winning lottery ticket, and it's not enough, so we kid ourselves that it is possible to enter these partnerships and be faced only with the problems of mud removal, and then we become unhappy and take Prozac and then we get divorced and die alone. book-quoteThere is a paradox here, however, a paradox that provides some consolation: these feelings of guilt are harmful to one's mental health, yes, granted. But those who have no need to feel guilty are, in my experience, the most mentally unhealthy of all of us, because the only way to have a guilt-free relationship with one's parents is to talk to them and see them constantly, maybe even live with them. And that can't be good, can it? So if those are the choices – permanent guilt, or some kind of Freudian awfulness involving five phone calls a day – then I have made the sane and mature choice. book-quote
