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The Great Night

Book by Chris Adrian · 9 quotes · Grief, Loss, Mourning

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The Great Night Quotes

“Maybe I'm too crazy to be in a relationship," Henry said, which was his familiar response to Bobby's familiar discourse about the future. It felt like a grown-up thing to say, and like a difficult concession, and what he meant by it was I am trying as hard as I can and it's not enough for you or even Why can't my weak eccentricities be adorable to you, as yours are to me? But Bobby always heard it as a conversation stopper, childish and easy and glib.”

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“She was doing just what it looked like she was doing, lying about, half-awake and half-asleep, passing the time and waiting for something to change. Because it seemed very clear to her, in those first few days, that what she felt was so intolerable that it couldn't possibly last, and if she did nothing to distract herself from it, she'd use it up, and then she'd be able to get up, and move about, and care once again about her duties to her people, about her constitutional obligations to dancing and singing and feasting and praising the movements of the stars. She didn't consider at all--she didn't dare to consider--that the sources of grief inside her might be inexhaustible.”

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“What she had done over the past year had required an equivalent expenditure of energy to a year-long sprint, and when she thought of it that way it was obviously an unreasonable thing to do. Remaining sane--clinging and grasping at it, seeking to please a propriety constructed by people whose boyfriends had never killed themselves--was in fact the most insane thing she could have done, and anyone properly equipped by the right kind of experience would understand that.”

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“She might do what the mortals did, and strain to convince herself that the death of her Boy and the loss of her husband had happened for some reason, that some restitution would be made for her, that she would be paid for her suffering with a truer and more tolerable understanding of the world, but she didn't think she had the muscles for it.”

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