## Metadata - Author: [[Christopher Priest]] - Full Title: The Affirmation - Category: #books ## Highlights - I thought of other people I had met again after a period of time. There was always the first surprise, an internal jolt: he has changed, she looks older. Then, within a few seconds, the perception changes and all that can be seen are the similarities. The mind adjusts, the eye allows; the ageing process, the differences of clothes and hair and possessions, are edited out by the will to detect continuity. Memory is mistrusted in the recognition of more important identifications. Body-weight might differ, but a person’s height or bone-structure do not. Soon it is as if nothing at all has altered. The mind erases backwards, re-creating what one remembers. ([Location 197](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PI941RQ&location=197)) - Here on Muriseay, scale and expectations were smaller, the effect more compact yet more startling. One could relate emotionally to this scenery: it was human-sized without being domestic. ([Location 1436](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PI941RQ&location=1436)) - Gracia had never made me cry, nor I her. We had been sophisticates in London, whatever that meant, although at the end, in the months before we parted, there had been a tautness in us that was just a suppression of emotion. Our coolness to each other had become a habit, a mannerism that became self-generating. We had known each other too long to break out of patterns. ([Location 1742](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PI941RQ&location=1742)) - Because I was unsure of my own intentions I did not wish to have to explain myself, either to them or to me. ([Location 1986](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PI941RQ&location=1986)) - “Seri, I realize I’m going to die one day . . . but I don’t believe that, except cerebrally. Because I’m alive now I feel I always will be. It’s as if there’s a sort of life force in me, something strong enough to fend off death.” ([Location 2152](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PI941RQ&location=2152)) - I sat on my bed in the cabin, reflecting on the psychological factors in hospitals, in which the removal of the patient’s clothing is only the first step of many by which he is reduced to an animated slab of meat. In this condition, individuality is suppressed for the greater glory of symptoms, the former presumably interfering with the appreciation of the latter. ([Location 2406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PI941RQ&location=2406)) - paleness moved like a moth against a curtain, then it was gone. ([Location 3432](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PI941RQ&location=3432))