“Time, mystical time. Cuttin' me open, then healin' me fine.”
- Were there clues I didn’t see?
“That time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want, minus one.”
“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
“No measure of time with you will be long enough, but we’ll start with forever”
“I ask myself- "what would you do if you had more time?" The Lord, in his kindness, He gives me what you always wanted, He gives me more time. (She tells our stories.) - Oh, can I show you what I'm proudest of? (The orphanage) I help to raise hundreds of children, I get to see them growing up. In their eyes I see you, Alexander - I see you every time. - And when my time is up, Have I done enough? Will they tell your story? - Oh, I can't wait to see you again … It's only a matter of time. - Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”
“Because time is cruel to all, and crueler still to artists. Because visions weakens, and voices wither, and talent fades. Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end... everyone wants to be remembered”
“What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?”
“ Blink and the years fall away like leaves"- "Blink and you’re twenty-eight, and everyone else is now a mile down the road, and you’re still trying to find it, and the irony is hardly lost on you that in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.”
“How do you walk to the end of the world? - I wanted to hold on to every step.”
“And this is what she’s settled on: she can go without food (she will not wither). She can go without heat (the cold will not kill her). But a life without art, without wonder, without beautiful things—she would go mad. She has gone mad. What she needs are stories. Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget. Stories come in so many forms: in charcoal, and in song, in paintings, poems, films. And books. Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.”
“I have loved you all my life, - there is no end to our story.”
Ah, but you my love were such a beautiful story… can you blame me for wanting to tell it? For drowning in the idea of something more? It was rather intoxicating to believe that there could be something there all this time-that a love could last so long, even in these cruel lives. You were just such a beautiful dream, I think I lost myself in fear of waking to reality.
You will find that some things last longer than life; That memory softens hard times, and someday you’ll look back on it all rather rosy. That grief goes on with you in yours even when the ones we grieve do not, and ache will fill many wretched moments drowning out the noise of this world. But of all the things that will outlast me, and you, and the next to come. Only one will ever count. Love my dear, love simply goes on. It’s why you’ll survive the tide, and smile when you cry, and find something in desperate times worth the fight. It’s why some miraculous way you and I will have eternities.
Sometimes I wonder what infinity would look like; I ponder if it would easily turn to misery, or simply boredom? But then I see you, and you look at me. And I think I could spend forever happily.
“We could spend one hundred years together, and you know it would never be enough. It’s enough that we change each other every day.”
