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61 " I have been unbearable but I have never been unloved. I have felt alone but I have never been alone and I’ve been forgiven for unforgivable things I have done. "
― Meg Mason , Sorrow and Bliss
62 " It is too much work to explain to them that you can stop and start again from nothing, that you can love the same person twice "
63 " I was wearing the only outfit I would own once I left – jeans and a Primark sweatshirt that Ingrid bought two of because they were £9 and had the word University printed on the front, which, she said, made it clear to people that we’d been educated at tertiary level but weren’t so desperate for approval we needed them to know where. "
64 " For want of another, beauty is a reason to live. "
65 " I have never understood why people think of champagne as celebratory rather than medicinal. (...) Surely the only time one needs one's blood effervesced is when life is utterly flat. "
66 " I snatched up the papers and reminded him that it had been his idea. “But yes, thank God you didn’t manage to get me pregnant, Jonathan. A baby I didn’t want in the first place turning out to have a genetic predilection for cocaine and white jeans.” I left before he could say anything else. "
67 " Normal people say, I can't imagine feeling so bad I'd genuinely want to die. I do not try and explain that it isn't that you want to die. It is that you know you are not supposed to be alive, feeling tiredness that powders your bones, a tiredness with so much fear. The unnatural fact of living is something you must eventually fix. "
68 " There are things, crimes in a marriage, that are so great you cannot apologize for them. Instead, watching television on the sofa, eating the dinner he made while you showered after the hospital, you say, Patrick? Yes. I like this sauce. "
69 " Peregrine put his palms on the table. He said Paris, Martha. “Please go to Paris.” “Why?” “Because when suffering is unavoidable, the only thing one gets to choose is the backdrop. Crying one’s eyes out beside the Seine is vastly better than crying one’s eyes out while traipsing around Hammersmith. "
70 " An observer to my marriage would think I have made no effort to be a good or better wife. Or, seeing me that night, that I must have set out to be this way and achieved it after years of concentrated effort. They could not tell that for most of my adult life and all of my marriage I have been trying to become the opposite of myself. * "
71 " Everything is broken and messed up and completely fine. That is what life is. It's only the ratios that change. Usually on their own. As soon as you think that's it, it's going to be like this forever, they change again. "
72 " making your back cold. You wait and wait and wait and then it doesn’t happen. The thing has left the room and it has left you behind. It isn’t going to end. There isn’t day and night. There isn’t time. Only pain, and the pressure and the terror that is like a twisted cord running down the center of your body. Late, in the afternoon, I got up and went to the kitchen. I tried to eat but couldn’t. Water made me feel nauseous. My hips ached from lying on my side in a ball. Patrick called and I cried on the phone and said sorry, sorry, sorry. He said he would change his flight. He said, “Can you try and go out? Go to the Ladies "
73 " Ingrid said yes you can. “Even the women who get those things lose them again. Husbands die and children grow up and marry someone you hate and use the law degree you bought them to start an Etsy business. Everything goes away eventually, and women are always the last ones standing so we just make up something else to want. "
74 " I said I am so sorry. “I’m the worst person in the world.” “No you’re not.” Patrick’s hand came down in a fist and he hit the arm of the sofa. “You’re not the best person in the world either, which is what you really think. You’re the same as everybody else. But that’s harder for you, isn’t it. You’d rather be one or the other. The idea you might be ordinary is unbearable. "
75 " When people discover that you and your husband were separated for a time but have since reconciled, they put their head on the side and say, “Clearly you never stopped loving him deep down.” But I did. I know I did. It is easier to say yes, you’re so right, because it is too much work to explain to them that you can stop and start again from nothing, that you can love the same person twice. "
76 " Then it was over and we stood up and said goodbye again. It was something else, the whole world was in it. "
77 " That was the root of the giant misunderstanding that was us getting married: the fact that he thought I was so uninhibited, fun, a skinny person interested in fashion, an attender of magazine parties, and I thought he had a sense of humor and didn’t take immense amounts of cocaine. "
78 " I accepted another cup of tea. Watching her pour, I told her I could not imagine how hard it must have been. Winsome said well, nevermind and I decided one day I would ask her about it, but not then because there was more sadness in the way she said those two words than could be managed by either of us, sitting at her garden table, having afternoon tea. “Forgotten is forgiven.” For whatever reason, Winsome said it again. I repeated it after her. “Forgotten is forgiven.” “That’s right. Difficult but possible. Unless you want it, Martha, I might have this last biscuit.” * "
79 " But I’m sure at the end of our lives we will all be thinking, if only I’d consumed more content. "
80 " Martha, no marriage makes sense. Especially not to the outside world. A marriage is its own world. "