THE TEXTURE OF HER DAILY LIFE

Still, there had been certain evenings like this one, when she would be ushered into a young man's car. The feeling was not of being attractive precisely, but rather of not having to entertain. It was breath-taking; to be ensconced in another person's company, yet to be relieved of the relentless minute-by-minute obligation to redeem one's existence - for there is some sense in which socially we are all on the Late Show, grinning, throwing off nervous witticisms, and crossing our legs, as a big hook behind the curtains lurks in the wings.


It was peculiar how the more you got to know someone, the more you grew to appreciate how little you knew, how little you had ever known - as if progressive intimacy didn't involve becoming ever more perceptive, but growing only more perfectly ignorant.


Maybe to live successfully alongside anyone was to come to understand not how much he was like you but how much he was not-you - and hence to allow, as we do so rarely with one another, that the person sprawled across from you on the sofa is actually there.
- The post-birthday world, Lionel Shriver