In England there was a saying used by football fans: It’s the hope that kills you. A loss is always more bitter if you let yourself dream of victory first. Low expectations, that’s how the Brits liked to live. Protectiveness dressed up as pragmatism.
Sayfa 308 - HarperCollins Publishers
“Kötü bir anıyı unutmanın en iyi yolu güzel bir tanesiyle değişmektir.”
The best part of being a valet is getting to drive some of the coolest cars to ever touch pavement. Guests came in driving Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Rolls-Royces—the whole aristocratic fleet.
It was my dream to have one of these cars of my own, because (I thought) they sent such a strong signal to others that you made it. You’re smart. You’re rich. You have taste. You’re important. Look at me.
The irony is that I rarely if ever looked at them, the drivers.
When you see someone driving a nice car, you rarely think, “Wow, the guy driving that car is cool.” Instead, you think, “Wow, if I had that car people would think I’m cool.” Subconscious or not, this is how people think.
Nostalgia
It is a part of the river in which to dream of former days, of long-lost forms and faces, and of things that might have been but are not.
Once the Romans discovered what the Christians were up to, they were confronted by the problem of toleration in a more exasperating form than even the Jews had presented. The Jews, after all, were “a sort of closed corporation, a people set apart from others by the mark of circumcision, who lived and worshiped largely by themselves, and did little active proselyting.” The Christians, on the other hand, were always talking about their Jesus. They were out to make Christians of the entire population of the empire, and the rapidity of their spread showed that this was no idle dream.
She has a story in her head that’s not in the book, one of an icy world and a dying town and a great wheeling congregation of birds. Not an unkindness, say the voices from her other dream, but a kindness of ravens.
