Tag Archives: Nobel Prize

“You were right to tell me that in life, it is not the future which counts, but the past.”

What kind of person believes that the past is more important than the future? Wouldn’t the least likely be someone with amnesia? The central character in this novel by Nobel Prize-winner Patrick Modiano is a Parisian who has no memory … Continue reading

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“There was a sunlit absence.”

This is the first line of my current-favorite poem by the Irish poet who was said to be “permanently homesick.”  I wonder if somehow he enjoyed being homesick. (Absence isn’t dark, it’s “sunlit” and the title of the poem is “Sunlight.”) It describes his … Continue reading

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“We say of some things that they can’t be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do — we do it all the time.”

These are the final sentences in Alice Munro’s collection of short stories, Dear Life, which won the Nobel Prize.  I believe that the character is lying and that she wishes she could forgive herself. I’m sure that other readers have come to … Continue reading

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“Even then I sensed this . . . would be at the core of my imagination for the rest of my life.”

This novel is a collection of beautiful sentences about self-discovery.  For example: “It was during these days that I first began to feel fissures opening in my soul, wounds of the sort that plunge some men into a deep, dark, … Continue reading

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