No one can keep his griefs in their prime; they use themselves up.
Hell, I'd even failed with women. Three wives. Nothing really wrong each time. It all got destroyed by petty bickering. Railing about nothing. Getting pissed-off over anything and everything. Day by day, year by year, grinding. Instead of helping each other you just sliced away, picked at this or that. Goading. Endless goading. It became a cheap contest. And once you got into it, it became habitual. You couldn't seem to get out. You almost didn't want to get out. And then you did get out. All the way.
Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
But you now, you wear your soul on your sleeve, exhausting your energy, propping yourself up on a tree, mumbling, or bent over your desk, asleep. Heaven gives you a form and you wear it out by pointless argument.
You should hurry up and acquire the cigar habit. It's one of the major happinesses. And so much more lasting than love, so much less costly in emotional wear and tear.
But I had been in love pretty often and I didn't think it stood the wear and tear.
Old women even forget how to love their sons. The heart gets worn out, Monsieur.
My memories of them had rubbed thin with overuse, worn to frail color transparencies flickering on the walls of my mind...
It would be quite unusual for me to get deep into a project and then shitcan it. One of the advantages of having done this for a while is that I have a better sense than I used to of when something is or isn't working. Until I developed that sense, this was a pretty dicey career for me, both in terms of paying the rent, and emotional wear and tear.
A lot of sad stories in a row - that wears on you.
He had loved too much, demanded too much, and he wore it all out.
If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even a stone can be worn down with enough rain.
