Extraits

" C’est normal de ressentir cela, ajouta-t-il. Lorsque quelqu’un meurt, on se dit toujours qu’on aurait dû se montrer plus gentil, plus aimant. On ne peut rien y faire. Nous ne devons pas déguiser nos sentiments. Si nous les comprenons, nous apprenons éventuellement à les accepter comme faisant partie de nous-même. "

Nous n’avons pas cherché à nous aimer, mais nous ne l’avons pas non plus évité. Après tout, on ne renonce pas volontairement au bonheur à moins d’être un masochiste ou un saint, et nous ne sommes ni l’un ni l’autre.

"Dr Paul Steiner, consultant psychiatrist at the Steen Clinic, sat in the front ground-floor consulting-room and listened to his patient’s highly rationalized explanation of the failure of his third marriage. Mr Burge lay in comfort on a couch the better to expound the complications of his psyche. Dr Steiner sat at his head in a chair of the carefully documented type which the Hospital Management Committee had decreed for the use of consultants. It was functional and not unattractive but it gave no support to the back of the head. From time to time a sharp jerk of his neck muscles recalled Dr Steiner from momentary oblivion to the realities of his Friday evening psychotherapy clinic. The October day had been very warm. After a fortnight of sharp frosts during which the staff of the clinic had shivered and pleaded, the official date for starting the central heating had coincided with one of those perfect autumn days when the city square outside had brimmed with yellow light and the late dahlias in the railed garden, bright as a paintbox, had shone like the gauds of high summer. It was now nearly seven o’clock. Outside, the warmth of the day had long given way, first to mist and then to chilly darkness. But here, inside the clinic, the heat of noon was trapped, the air, heavy and still, seemed spent with the breath of too much talking."

C'était un de ces moments inexplicables où l'on se retrouve soudain complètement seul au milieu d'une foule, où le bruit est comme assourdi, où les corps trop serrés semblent s'écarter, devenir lointains et mystérieux, comme des acteurs sur une scène éloignée.