Robert Hellenga

“He doesn't believe in talking too much about art, especially while you're looking at it. The pressure to appreciate is the great enemy of actual enjoyment. Most people don't know what they like because they feel obligated to like so many different things. They feel they're supposed to be overwhelmed, so instead of looking, they spend their time thinking up something to say, something intelligent, or at least clever.”

“The advice he reads in Ann Landers – good advice as long as you don’t need it, perfectly sensible as long as you don’t have any use for it.”

“What to do with the past? There was so much of it.”

“Sometimes it takes a little jolt to make us appreciate what we’ve got.”

“Fussing over food was important. It gave a shape to the day: breakfast, lunch, dinner; beginning, middle, end.”

“He knew that he’d known her for less than a week, but now that she was gone he was continually probing his feelings for her, the way he might probe a sore tooth with his tongue, engaging her in imaginary conversations, imagining her saying such delightful things.”

“Death was a lens that would reveal things as they really were: what was important would assume its true importance what was unimportant would recede into the shadows.”