Friday, November 27, 2015

It is not the conscious changes made in our lives by men and women - a new job, a new town, a divorce - which really shapes them, like the the chapter headings in a biography, but a long, slow mutation of emotion, hidden, all-penetrative; something by which they may be so taken up that the practical outward changes of their lives in the world, noted with surprise, scandal or envy by others, pass almost unnoticed by themselves. This gives a shifting quality to the whole surface of life; decisions made with reason and the tongue may never be made valid by the heart.

(Nadine Gordimer, 1923 - 2014)