…it seems we may best be able to inhabit a place where we are not faced with the additional challenge of having to be there.” (p.23) - Alain de Botton

It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.

Alice cold make no sense of the despair into which she had fallen. She had always held that happiness should be defined as an absence of pain rather than the presence of pleasure. So why, with a decent job, good health, and a roof over her head, did she regularly and so childishly collapse into moist sobs?

Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.