The Best Thing I’ve Read in a Very, Very Long Time
It’s all trivial — your grouse, my hermit, Bernard’s Byron. Comparing what we’re looking for misses the point. It’s wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise, we’re going out the way we came in. That’s why you can’t believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.
~Hannah Jarvis, in Arcadia by Tom Stoppard.
I saw Arcadia on Broadway about a month ago. I read the play the past couple days. It was so good it almost