The Pleasure of My Company

I do not know why. I'm not that bad at writing nor in expressing my thoughts. I'm usually more opinionated than the next person. I'm a movie, book, and music fan. I can appreciate themes, symbolisms, emotions, words, beats... but for the life of me, I can't do a review.

However, in an effort to share how I think about this book, I'm picking out choice passages.

To hits-at-the-right-spot-and-other-people-verbalizing-your-thoughts moments:

I guessed that one day the restrictions I imposed on myself would end. But first, it seemed that my range of possible activities would have to iris down to zero before I could turn myself around. Then, when I was finally static and immobile, I could weigh and measure every exterior force and, slowly and incrementally, once again allow the outside in. And that would be my life.

When an endeavor is special in a person's life, others discern it intuitively and appreciate it more, like the praise a child receives for a lumpy clay sculpture. And as ordinary as such an event might be, it can be instilled with uncommon power.

I knew that once love is in place, it does not unstick without enormous upheaval, without horrible images of betrayal flashing uncontrollably through the mind, without visions of a bleak and inconsolable self, a self that is a captive of grief, which lingers viscously in the heart.

..., in the deeper hours of the night I began to look at myself, to consider myself and my condition, to measure the life I'd led so far. I did not know what made me this way. I did not know of any other way I could be. I did not know what was inside me or how I could redeem what was hidden there. There must be a key or person or thing, or song or poem or belief, or old saw that could access it, but they all seemed so far away, and after I drifted further and further into self-absorption, I closed the evening with this desolate thought: There are few takers for the quiet heart.

Endless road engendered endless thought.

The imperfect ideal.

The Pleasure of My Company is a novel by Steve Martin (yes, that guy in Father of the Bride). In the book's jacket, it's described as "the chronicle of a modern-day neurotic yearning to break free."