A Melancholic Quote
The last stop was up by the Pincian Gate and it was often windy there in the winter and I would wonder if there was really any substance to life and if it wasn’t all like this, really, hungry travelers, some of them with sore feet, looking for dim hotel lights in a city that is not supposed to suffer winter but that suffers plenty, and everybody speaking another language. —John Cheever, Boy in Rome
The above quote is from the thick and dense, The Stories of John Cheever, which is from a library in Rome that allows members to check out books and bring them home. I am now a member. My shelves will rejoice as will the postman who must always deliver my packages of books.
But back to the quote, to the story Boy in Rome, which read like it was falling from a tongue, like it came off all in one go (and I have enough experience to know that is not true). What a melancholy sweetened truth. It’s not one to hang up in the living room, but it is one to repeat and to remember.
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