The History of Love: A Novel

“And though you were grown up by then, you felt as lost as a child. And though your pride was broken, you felt as vast as your love for her. She was gone, and all that was left was the space where you’d grown around her, like a tree that grows around a fence. “For a long time, it remained hollow. Years, maybe. And when at last it was filled again,

Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

“Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.”)

I did it for myself alone, not for anyone else, and that was the difference. It didn’t matter if I found the words, and more than that, I knew it would be impossible to find the right ones. And because I accepted that what I’d once believed was possible was in fact impossible, and because I knew I would never show a word of it to anyone, I wrote a

There were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. It was standing outside, and I invited it in. I scowled at the world. And the world scowled back. We were locked in a stare of mutual disgust. I used to let the door slam in people’s

Naturally, there were misunderstandings. There were times when a finger might have been lifted to scratch a nose, and if casual eye contact was made with one’s lover just then, the lover might accidentally take it to be the gesture, not at all dissimilar, for Now I realize I was wrong to love you. These mistakes were heartbreaking. And yet, because

The air felt different in my lungs. The world no longer looked the same. You change and then you change again. You become a dog, a bird, a plant that leans always to the left. Only now that my son was gone did I realize how much I’d been living for him. When I woke up in the morning it was because he existed, and when I ordered food it was because

there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.

Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist. There are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written, or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom, or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for