But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat.
He was exasperated because he didn't know what that look meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.
So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people’s eyes and became an exasperating expression.
Tags: peace war despair indifference eyes personal desperation nationality public bigness exasperation smallness
I'm getting really tired of bleeding. Someone stop the world, I want to get off.
Lilith SaintcrowTags: exasperation jill-kismet
People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them.
Louis-Ferdinand CélineTags: humor humanity people sanity humour exasperation
I simply--don't know," Flavius said, and then suddenly explosive: "I don't know and I don't care! Go to bed.
Rosemary SutcliffTags: sleepy exasperation flavius
Now for the hitch in Jane's character,' he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. 'The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble!
Charlotte BrontëTags: character personality flaw exasperation
I’d like to go out in the front yard and shout something. “None of this is worth it!” That’s what I’d like people to hear.
Raymond CarverTags: exasperation
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