Book Excerpt : Levels of Life by Julian Barnes

Title : Levels of Life
Author: Julian Barnes
Publisher: Random House
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Kindle Edition
Pages: 74
Rating: 5/5

Books are the real saviour. They heal us. Reading a book is like exploring a new world which is hidden behind those beautiful words.

Past days, I read a book “Levels of Life by Julian Barnes “.

Frankly speaking, it was hard to enter into it but in the end that book left me speechless, spellbound with Teary-eyed. This book is all about Photography, Ballooning and most importantly love, grief, Pain, variety of emotions and Silence. No, I’m not going to summarize it because it would kill that magic or you can say I don’t have that much sensible vocabulary To express it. 

It is a ‘Must Read Book’ especially for those who have lost their loved ones and suffered a lot. Here I want to share few catchy lines of this book, Beyond our imagination.

-Money couldn’t have saved her so what good was money.

-What doesn’t kill us making us stronger !

-Grief snatches the breathe from you, makes stomach turn. Cuts off the blood supply to  the brain

-She was alive in my memory

-If she was anywhere she was within me.

-Let’s concentrate on the essential.

-Dreams are more reliable more secure than memory. in dreams she arrives  looking and  acting like herself. Dreams are always a source of comfort.

-I could not kill myself because i would also be killing her. she would die a second time.  So the question arises how am I to live. I must live as she would have wanted me to.

-I still think of Sara everyday of life. Every hour of the day.Someone is dead may mean they are not alive but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. So I talk to her constantly. This feels as normal as necessary.

-I keep alive our lost private conversations.Her voice calms me gives me courage

 The paradox of grief. I have survived what is now four years of her absence. It is  because I have had four year of her presence. she always answers when I talk to her.

-I always miss her on some occasion .no silent sleepy presence. no hand in mine.

-She exists not really in the present not wholly in the past but in some intermediate tense  the past present.

-Sorrow is a kind of rust on the soul. which every new idea contributes in its passage to  scour away

-The image is lost for ever , available only for memory turned into anecdote.

-I live alone the habit grows

-The cure for loneliness is solitude. Marianne moore advises

-Pain shows that you have not forgotten. pain enhances the flavor of the memories , pain is  a proof of love ,if it didn’t matter it wouldn’t matter.

-There are moments which appear to indicate some kind of progress when the tears the  daily unavoidable tears stop.

-When possessions can be disposed of.

-You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed…’ 

 P.s. – Read It, Feel it and Breath It.