“ I've never outgrown that feeling of mild pride, of acceptance, when children take your hand. ”
When it's gone, you'll know what a gift love was. You'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.
~ Ian Mcewan
The anticipation and dread he felt at seeing her was also a kind of sensual pleasure, and surrounding it, like an embrace, was a general elation--it might hurt, it was horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but he had found out for himself what it was to be in love, and it thrilled him.
Finally he spoke the three simple words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can every quite cheapen. She repeated them, with exactly the same slight emphasis on the second word, as though she were the one to say them first. He had no religious belief, but it was impossible not to think of an invisible presence or witness in the room, and that these words spoken aloud were like signatures on an unseen contract.
The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.
