Kinder than solitude

"To be able at any moment to pull up roots minimally put down, to be able to exist without being noticed or missed. These things gave her an off sense of virginal freedom. Anything concerning the heart leaves it in confusion; to desire nothing is to have no vulnerability."

"Much of life's comfort comes not from the absoluteness of happiness and goodness but from the hope that something would be good enough, and one would find oneself happy enough."

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This book gives an insight of the dark side of human's emotion. It's a psychological book that's centered around this idea of loneliness, secrets, and relationships between people. Sometimes I feel like it's too realistic that it gives you an uncomfortable feeling deep inside. We, humans are masters of self-deception, i guess that's why we tend to dislike facing our demons in our hearts. However, this book makes you face that deepest, darkest part of your soul that can be quite disturbing sometimes especially when you read the insight thoughts of one of the main character, Ruyu. I have never quite come across a character as aloof and as detached from the world like her. Neither do I like or dislike her character but you can't help but certainly feel drawn by her every thoughts. It's scary to think how a 15 year old can understand the world so deeply as her and understand the stupidity of human nature. I have to agree though with how she sometimes feel especially when she feels annoyed by how so many people try hard to mold her into someone acceptable by society when all she wants is to be left alone. Her existence disturbs the balance of society and I guess people just don't like seeing someone so different from them.

"Please let the strangers around me remain as strangers..."













"Yet how could she explain that being by her own-and not someone's property- was the only thing she had wanted?.... all sorts of people had since tried to claim her, but to stay unclaimed was to never be disowned again."

“It takes courage to find solace in trivialities, willfulness not to let trivialities usurp one’s life.”

"Only in a drama would an old man lay his hand on the coarse bark of a tree and mourn in advance his own death; in real life, a man's grief for himself was as wordless as the dim light in Grandpa's eyes, the passing days pooling into a stale puddle around his dying body."

“But loneliness is as delusive a belief in the pertinence of the world as is love: in choosing to feel lonely, as in choosing to love, one carves a space next to oneself to be filled by others - a friend, a lover, a toy poodle, a violinist on the radio.”

The habit of being opaque allowed her to be a mystery in other people's eyes. 

....,

“To have an identity – to be known – required one to possess an ego, yet so much more, too: a collection of people, a traceable track lining one place to another – all these had to be added to that ego or one to have any kind of identity

"If she had ever felt anything close to passion, it was a passion of obliterating kind, any connection made by another being, by accident or by intention, had to be erased; the void she maintained around herself was her only meaningful possession."

She was afraid of meeting another person like her, but more than that she was afraid of never meeting another person like her, who, however briefly, would look into her eyes so that she knew she was not alone in her loneliness.

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However the character that I symphatize the most is Moran and it's sad how much she changes over the years. A simple, happy go lucky girl turns into someone who prefers solitude and placidity of life. I think that in the book she's the most relatable character other than Boyang. Moran's train of thoughts saddened me the most, perhaps because i think her life wasn't supposed to be like that. Only if Ruyu had not entered her life.. But that's life isn't it, we can't possibly dwell on the "what ifs" and at the end we just have to accept the bitter path wherever our life takes us. 

Not everyone had the right to music, just as not everyone had the right to claim beauty hope and happiness...

What if she would have nothing poetic in her for people to love?

“Perhaps there is a line in everyone’s life that, once crossed, imparts a certain truth that one has not been able to see before, transforming solitude from a choice into the only possible line of existence.”

The moments and hours and days that followed become an elongated tunnel, in which Moran was the lone traveler, carried forward not by her own will but by the unforgiving current of time. 

"Though her life lacked the poignancy of great happiness and acute pain, she believed she had found, in their places, the blessing of solitude."

-It was odd, how one could become a collector of irrelevant memories-

........

People rarely reclaim what they have lost, they only replace them

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Sometimes Moran wondered if her chief merit was her willingness to serve as a human receptacle for details. Sympathy and admiration and surprise she dutifully yet insufficiently expressed, and afterward the others moved on, forgetting her face the moment she was out of sight, or else they would not have seen her in the first place: she was one of those strangers people needed once in a while to make their lives less empty.

With discipline Moran had lived in unperturbed calm. … She had longed for nothing but placidity. But peace like that was only a locked gate.....


But there was this one world, in which Moran had no position to claim as hers. What she did have were observations and questions... those that kept to herself each unanswerable one pushing her further away from the world, sometimes she felt as though she was living from a long way off. Why couldn't anyone detect the hollow echo of her voice when she spoke? 
....,

Each of the most complicated stories offered a clarity that she couldn't find in the world around her, and each character cam to an uncomplaining end. 

The crowdedness of family life and the faithfulness of solitude- both brave decisions, or both decisions of cowardice- make little dent, in the end, on the profound and perplexing loneliness in which every human heart dwells. 

"They were not her stories. They were not about her time, or her people, but what she had once found in these stories-escape-would eventually become her wisdom. Perhaps if she kept these tales going he would one day forgive her stubbornness in choosing solitude, because he, kinder than solitude, was always here for her until death do them apart."

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Anyway, I would extremely recommend this book if you like a more deep, profound, and slow paced novel that has many great quotes! It's not a light read and the suspense is not dramatic, unlike how other mysteries novel should be; however for some reason I was deeply entranced with some of the proses. I especially like the author's keen view of the world and people's emotion in general, that in itself make this book a must read!