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121 " He thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. "
― Julian Barnes , The Sense of an Ending
122 " ....in this country shadings of class resist time longer than differentials in age "
123 " So a)To what extent might human relationships be expressed in a mathematical or logical formula? And b) If so, what signs might be placed between the integers? Plus and minus, self- evidently; sometimes multiplication, and yes. division. But these signs are limited. Thus an entirely failed relationship might be expressed in terms of both loss/minus and division/ reduction, showing a total zero; whereas an entirely successful one can be represented by both addition and multiplication. But what of most relationships? Do they not require to be expressed in notations which are logically insoluble? "
124 " There's something wrong with the young who can't be fascinated by a genius. "
125 " Adrian's fragment also refers to the question of responsibility: whether there's a chain of it, or whether we draw the concept more narrowly. I'm all for drawing it narrowly. Sorry, no, you can't blame your dead parents, or having brothers and sisters, or not having them, or your genes, or society, or whatever - not in normal circumstances. Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary. "
126 " Mas o tempo… o tempo primeiro fixa-nos e depois confunde-nos. Pensávamos que estávamos a ser adultos quando estávamos só a ser prudentes. Imaginávamos que estávamos a ser responsáveis, mas estávamos só a ser cobardes. Aquilo a que chamávamos realismo acabava por ser uma maneira de evitar as coisas e não de as enfrentar. Tempo… deem-nos tempo suficiente e as nossas decisões mais fundamentadas parecerão instáveis e as nossas certezas, bizarras. "
127 " my desire to ascribe responsibility might be more a reflection of my own cast of mind than a fair analysis of what happened, like the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us "
128 " Some Englishman once said marriage is a long dull meak with pudding served first "
129 " And that’s a life, isn’t it? Some achievements and some disappointments. "
130 " Those little age differentials, so crucial and so gross when we are young, erode. We end up belonging to the same category, that of the non-young. I've never much minded this myself. [p. 66] "
131 " I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not, except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? "
132 " We live in time—it holds us and moulds us—but I’ve never felt I understood it very well. And I’m not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing—until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return. "
133 " And mental states may be inferred from actions. The tyrant rarely sends a handwritten note requesting the elimination of an enemy. "
134 " You can take Lucas to watch football when he’s older,’ she once told me. Ah, the rheumy-eyed grandpa on the terraces inducting the lad into the mysteries of soccer: how to loathe people wearing different coloured shirts, how to feign injury, how to blow your snot on to the pitch – See, son, you press hard on one nostril to close it, and explode the green stuff out of the other. How to be vain and overpaid and have your best years behind you before you’ve even understood what life’s about. Oh yes, I look forward to taking Lucas to the football. "
135 " If I hadn’t decided on cremation and a scattering, I could have used the phrase as an epitaph on a chunk of stone or marble: “Tony Webster—He Never Got It.” But that would be too melodramatic, even self-pitying. How about “He’s on His Own Now”? That would be better, truer. Or maybe I’ll stick with: “Every Day Is Sunday. "
136 " None of this, of course, was ever stated: the genteel social Darwinism of the English middle classes always remained implicit. "
137 " but what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed. "
138 " We knew from our reading of great literature that Love involved Suffering, and would happily have got in some practice at Suffering if there was an implicit, perhaps even logical, promise that Love might be on its way. "
139 " everything was down to chance, that the world existed in a state of perpetual chaos, and only some primitive storytelling instinct, itself doubtless a hangover from religion, retrospectively imposed meaning on what might or might not have happened. "
140 " Who was it said that the longer we live, the less we understand? "