Listen- all that she was then, all that she is now, those gestures, everything I remember but won't or can't articulate anymore, the perfect words that are somehow made imperfect when used to describe her and all that should remain unsaid about her- it is all unsupported by reason. I know that. But that enigmatic calm that attaches itself to people in the presence of reason- it's something from which I haven't been able to take comfort, not reliably, not since her.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the profound and often unexplainable feelings one has for someone special.
Elliot Perlman expresses the complexity of emotions associated with a significant person in his life, highlighting how words often fail to capture the essence of those feelings. Despite knowing that reason cannot fully justify or explain these emotions, he acknowledges the comfort that comes from the presence of someone meaningful, which he struggles to find after their absence.
In practice
In a speech about the power of love and loss.
I told him the truth, that I loved him and didn't regret anything about our lives together. But do we ever 'tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God' as my father used to say, to those we love? Or even to ourselves? Don't even the best and most fortunate of lives hint at other possibilities, at a different kind of sweetness and, yes, bitterness too? Isn't this why we can't help feeling cheated, even when we know we haven't been?
The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.
It is a strange paradox that while the grief of football fans(and it is real grief) is private - we each have an individual relationship with our clubs, and I think that we are secretly convinced that none of the other fans understands quite why we have been harder hit than anyone else - we are forced to mourn in public, surrounded by people whose hurt is expressed in forms different from our own.
I fairly often have thought how lucky I was. I knew everybody because I was married to Bogie, and that 25-year difference was the most fantastic thing for me to have in my life.
Believe me, Being gay is not a choice. Noone would choose to make life harder than it has to be.
A good apology is like antibiotic, a bad apology is like rubbing salt in the wound.
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