You never mind being alone, it's fine. It's better even. Until you're lying sleepless in bed, listening to the thunder that's so close it shakes the house and blinking at the flashes of lightning that brighten the room so suddenly. Both just long and harsh enough to wish there was a pair of strong arms around you.
My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succour, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? "What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie."
ReplyDelete-Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale