Freedom

Like a cold spring at the bottom of a warmer lake, old Swedish-gened depression was seeping up inside him: a feeling of not deserving a partner like Lalitha; of not being made for a life of freedom and oudaw heroics; of needing a more dully and enduringly discontented situation to struggle against and fashion an existence within.

when he emerged from the bathroom with the ring on his ring finger, and Jenna rushed past him and then reeled out again, squealing and cursing at the stench, he was a different person. He could see this person so clearly, it was like standing outside himself. He was the person who’d handled his own shit to get his wedding ring back. This wasn’t the person he’d thought he was, or would have chosen to be if he’d been free to choose, but there was something comforting and liberating about being an actual definite someone, rather than a collection of contradictory potential someones.

“It’s all circling around the same problem of personal liberties,” Walter said. “People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don’t have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can’t afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to. That’s what Bill Clinton figured out — that we can’t win elections by running against personal liberties. Especially not against guns, actually.”

“That is really weird,” Patty agreed, shaking her head, “but, you know, it’s not Connie’s fault.” The Paulsens, however, refused to be satisfied with “weird.” They wanted sociopathic, they wanted passive-aggressive, they wanted bad. They needed Patty to select one of these epithets and join them in applying it to Carol Monaghan, but Patty was incapable of going past “weird,” and the Paulsens in turn refused to add Connie to their invite list.

It turns out to have been better after all to be considered dumb and dull than brilliant and extraordinary. This way, it’s a pleasant surprise that Patty is even a little bit Creative, rather than an embarrassment that she isn’t more so.

Un pays suivant attentivement chaque faux rebondissement d'American Idol tandis que le monde s'embrasait semblait, pour Walter, mériter tous les cauchemars que l'avenir lui réservait.

Patty, un sourire figé aux lèvres, regardait les groupes séduisants et ploutocrates installés aux autres tables, sous la jolie lumière tamisée du restaurant. Il n'y avait bien sur pas de meilleur endroit au monde que New York. C'était la base de l'autosatisfaction de sa famille, l'estrade du haut de laquelle tout le reste pouvait être ridiculisé, l'effet collatéral de l'age adulte et de sa sophistication qui leur achetait le droit de se comporter comme des enfants .

Les nouvelles concernant Walter Berglund ne furent pas découvertes dans un quotidien local - Patty et lui étaient partis pour Washington deux ans plus tôt et ils ne signifiaient plus rien pour St Paul - mais la bonne société urbaine de Ramsey Hill n'était pas loyale à sa ville au point de ne pas lire le New York Times.

"I will do what you want."
"No, God, listen to me. I'm asking you to do what I don't want."
Possibly, in Jersey City, New Jersey, he was rolling his eyes at this. But she knew that he wanted to see her, he was ready to take a plane in the morning, and the only way they could agree definitively that he shouldn't come was to prolong the conversation for two hours, going around and around, performing the unresolvable conflict, until they both felt so dirtied and exhausted and sick of themselves and sick of each other that the prospect of getting together became genuinely unappetizing.
Not least among the ingredients of Patty's misery, when they finally hung up, was her sense of wasting Richard's love. She knew him to be a man supremely irritated by female bullshit, and the fact that he'd put up with two nonstop hours of hers, which was about 119 minutes more than he was constituted to put up with, filled her with gratitude and sorrow about the waste, the waste. The waste of his love.

La coach appela chez Patty et parla à sa mère qui, comme toujours, était essoufflée et prête à partir pour une réunion et n’avait donc ni le temps de parler ni les ressources morales nécessaires pour admettre qu’elle n’avait pas le temps de parler.