L'amore in una foto

Mio padre, cinquant'anni oggi.

[per la cronaca, nella foto: io e papà, una ventina d'anni fa, probabilmente in Austria.]

Sterne folgen dir, EINSHOCH6

Capisci di essere a un punto di non ritorno quando non riesci a toglierti dalla testa il ritornello di una canzone. Tedesca.

Looking for Alaska, John Green

"No," she said, and I couldn't tell at first whether she was reading my kiss-obsessed mind or responding to herself out loud. She turned away from me, and softly, maybe to herself, said, "Jesus, I'm not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they're gonna do. I'm just going to do it. Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia."

"Huh?" I asked.

"You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awsome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."

Dubbi dell'ultimo minuto

Cosa regalo all'uomo più importante della mia vita che compie cinquant'anni?

[No, non sono diventata gerontofila, sto parlando di mio padre.]

E se...?

E se ti dicessi che penso di essere innamorata di te?

E se facessi comparire questo enorme elefante in mezzo alla stanza e non ti volessi più solo come un amico?

E se ti facessi notare che le cose tra te e la tua ragazza vanno male da fin troppo tempo?

E se sottolineassi che è sintomatico il fatto che cerchi me e non lei? Che passi le serate con me senza dirle niente?

E se ammettessimo entrambi che cinque anni fa siamo stati due stupidi orgogliosi e che saremmo potuti essere molto di più, che potremmo essere ora molto di più?

E se ti confessassi che queste domande sono un pensiero fisso nella mia mente?

Riuscirò a dirtelo?

The Land of Laughs, Jonathan Carroll

"Why?" She picked an oblong glass paperweight off an end table and rolled it around in her hands.

"Because no one else ever got that close to my world." I uncrossed my leg and leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Regarding a book, for me at least, is like traveling in someone else's world. If it's a good book, then you feel comfortable and yet anxious to see what's going to happen to you there, what'll be around the next corner. But if it's a lousy book, then it's like going through Secaucus, New Jersey - it smells and you wish you weren't there, but since you've started the trip, you roll up the windows and breathe though your mouth until you're done."

One Day, David Nicholls

Good. Here it is. I think you've scared of being happy, Emma. I think you think that the natural way of things is for your life to be grim and grey and dour and to hate your job, hate where you live, not have success or money or God forbid a boyfriend (and a quick discersion here - that whole self-deprecating thing about being unattractive is getting pretty boring I can tell you). In fact I'll go further and say I think you actually get a kick out of being disappointed and under-achieving, because it's easier, isn't it? Failure and unhappiness is easier because you can make a joke out of it. Is this annoying you? I bet it is. Well I've only just started.

[...]

You're gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of Confidence. Either that or a scented candle.