From Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty :

"Something happened when you looked in the mirror together.
You asked it, as always, a question, and you asked each other something too; and the space,shadowy but glossy, the further
room in which you found yourself, as if on stage, vibrated with ironies and sentimental admissions."

You can fall in love with someone you don't trust.
You can trust someone you're not in love with.
But could you really trust someone you're in love with, and could you ever truly fall in love with someone you trust?
Purely rhetorical nonsense- please don't bother conjuring an answer.

Last night I realised I only yearn for freedom so passionately because I'm prone to dependency. I also long to be mercilessly enslaved, because I'm prone to stubborn, unassailable detachment.

Her poems withered and died the moment she tried to turn them into words. As for words themselves, they surely did protest, but words are used to dealing with worse than enforced constraints of rhythm.

How refreshingly devastating, when a story ends abruptly, leaving you nothing but a few suggestions as to what follows- did the hero find the treasure he was looking for, or did he die helpless and afraid on his deserted island?..

You sit and wonder, conjuring possible scenarios, wanting to believe the best, yet fearing for the worst, fully aware of the fact that thinking alone is inadequate; there must be witnesses, tangible statements to prove the events narrated really did occur.

In sort, you ought to write the next chapter- and perhaps the one after it, too-, whilst deep inside recognizing the futility of such a task; you're not half as talented or imaginative; even if you were, how could you possibly recreate the style, the vision, the effect;
even if you did, how could you bring yourself to believe your own fantasies as truths?

You also know that no one cares about happy endings anymore, and surely no one enjoys a plot, in which everything unfolds flawlessly or according to plan, in a world where everyone gets what they deserve. So the story must end, just like a life, never enough, stubbornly undefinable, forever incomplete...

Don’t you know there’s a fire blazing behind those controlled features? Desire hides behind a veil of detachment. “You seek to touch my skin” she said. “I’d let you hold my soul, but could you bear its heat? It might scald your hands, not with its unparalleled magnificence- no claim to brilliance or singularity- but because it strives to devour itself and everything surrounding it.”

A soul? Didn’t I sell mine long ago, to a band of tired nomads? They only gave me a dream in exchange; they said it was magical. I stood and watched it shine brighter than the stars; I dared hope it would provide my body with the sparkle it needed.

In the morning, they were gone, taking the moon with them, and all I had left was a dim piece of glass. So I still sit alone in the darkness, sometimes, wondering if they deceived me, or if my innate urge to doubt all that is warm and comforting casts a shadow on even the most radiant of lights life has gifted me with.

Reminder: Books are not a substitute for sleep. Trespassers will be prosecuted. Come morning, their eyelids will be stitched together, their bedcovers rendered unmovable; nearby alarms will refuse to break the silence; they’ll have “tired” branded on their foreheads and stay trapped in perpetual slow motion for the rest of the day.

When the mind needs solace, there’s nothing as effective as dreams. But sleep-enforcing rituals have become increasingly complex lately- on nights like this, any path to oblivion should suffice. Read well.

My day began at dawn- awake again.
I tried to sleep some more, but soon gave up.
Fresh images of you crossing my mind.
A piece of daily life, disguised as such.
Nothing too time consuming or severe;
Obsessions neutralized- a gift of time.

I dragged me to my feet and washed my face,
Had breakfast in a rush and left for work.
I walked on empty streets, hopped on the bus.
I listened to a song that spoke of you.
My thoughts betrayed me, like they always do,
But soon my precious logic gained control.

I sat in crowded rooms, and in a corner
An unfamiliar face stared back at me.
No one you’d call attractive, on the whole,
Yet something in his eyes caught my attention.
His eyes. They looked like yours,
They made my skin crawl.
I had to look away, but even then,
There was no way I’d focus on the speakers.
I didn't hear a word, and later on
I'd have to make it up in pointless sentences.

Thus, all which had been buried into memory
Was dragged up to the surface with a glance.
It seemed so long forgotten, I'd began to doubt
The very truth of our abandoned moments.
Yet there it was, the feeling, burning me like ice
And there it was, the fear, driving me crazy.

How easy to go on in pure denial,
Assuming I was cured, or even worse,
Acting as if our story never happened,
As if you never looked at me that way-
So real, I wouldn't dare assume you faked it;
So deep, I couldn't blame it on myself
Or my delusional imagination
-Which wouldn't change a thing, in any case
Lost as I was in a transparent labyrinth
With my defenses scattered at your feet.

Time goes by, blunting life’s edges, giving even our gravest errors an aura of necessity, and in the end all that remains is a sense of regret for what we didn’t- or couldn't- do.

So I wish I’d been stronger, braver and franker; I wish I’d given you more, and demanded more, too; I wish I’d shown my feelings instead of vaguely mentioning them in self-pitiful texts; I wish I’d expressed my anger, however undeserved, instead of letting it go stale before turning to sorrow, for all would be over now, anyway. Humiliation can only last that long, whilst inaction comes back to haunt us.

But there’s no point dwelling in the realm of unfinished memories. I’ve changed; I’m who I used to be. I still feed on sunshine and idealized encounters; I still can’t decide whether living is a tragedy or the greatest adventure; I still seek out the company of people, then violently push them away to become engrossed in my constraining, explosive love-affair with solitude.

The future is like a distorting mirror: it shows nothing more than a disfigured image of my expectations. And the past is like a delicate spider’s web, in which I am forever caught.

Last night I heard you talk to yourself, again; the words made hardly any sense. I stood and watched you look in the mirror, your face convulsed in an expression of terror. “What did you see?”, I asked. “Beauty. The ultimate essence of Beauty.” “Then why are you so frightened? ”Because real Beauty can only be found in death.”

But I wouldn’t let myself be carried away by another one of your melodramas- we’d both seen enough of that. I said: “You must make up a ritual, a single thoughtful act of repetition to help you keep loneliness at bay, to save your mind from the embrace of madness.”

And I showed you the starlit sky: “Aren’t the stars and moon beautiful, too?”. “The stars remind me of all the things beyond my reach”, you replied. “The moon is the pill I swallow every night before going to bed, and every morning I wake up emptier.”

I knew, then, that you had to die, for only in death would your
soul find Peace and Serenity; for only then would I be cured from
the futile thirst for Perfection.