When someone tells you, “I love you,” and then you feel, “Oh, I must be worthy after all,” that’s an illusion. That’s not true. Or someone says, “I hate you,” and you think, “Oh, God, I knew it; I’m not very worthy,” that’s not true either. Neither one of these thoughts hold any intrinsic reality. They are an overlay. When someone says, “I love you,” he is telling you about himself, not you. When someone says, “I hate you,” she is telling you about herself, not you. World views are self views—literally.

2004

I may not be enthusiastic about much, but when I like something, I really like it. It seems as though my life is just a long string of
obsessions and small habits, most of which fade, some of which endure.
Like the compulsive buying of Sainsbury’s vegetable samosas, 1.59 at the
then-local shop. Or the pair of jeans that I’ll wear five days out of
the week for months on end, because they are comfortable and serve me
well. The same with shoes. The same with songs.

But, with the material things, I’ll wear them out until the seams are
frayed and dirty, and there’ll be this strange comfort in knowing that
these are objects that have endured with time, objects that have
acquired a history. I hold dear all that is deteriorating from frequent
use. And just the same, I look fondly, comfortably, on the way that all
this necessary soil accumulates along the threads of everyone else’s
belongings, evidence of living within a city – on the white-shirted
elbows grazing the same surfaces as hundreds before, the coat-tails
dirtied by one too many train journeys, the duct tape wound around a
broken phone. I have no interest in the pristine.

And I like to watch things run themselves dry, fill themselves up,
run themselves out – glasses of water, bottles of perfume, the soap that
sits on the ledge of the bathtub, the pen writing its final sentence,
those notebooks so packed full of words that not another letter could
possibly fit.

—Anonymous