Orts #714

. . . it is not always possible to restore one’s boundaries after they have been blurred and made permeable by a relationship: try as we might, we cannot reconstitute ourselves as the autonomous beings we previously imagined ourselves to be. Something of us is now outside, and something of the outside is now within us.
     — Mohsin Hamid, in The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007)


   At fifteen I became an evolutionist, and it all became clear. We came from mud, and after 3.8 billion years of evolution, at our core is still mud. Nobody can be a divorce lawyer and doubt that.
     — Gavin d’Amato, the Danny DeVito character in War of the Roses (1989)


...life is a sexually transmitted condition with a terminal prognosis.
     — Ira Byock, in The Four Things that Matter Most


Why do we feel embarrassed, impatient, ill-at-ease, assembled like amateur actors who have not been assigned their parts?
     — T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion


value-added link:
a promising young string quartet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JJB7dCCQ7w