1
" Human social life, I suggest, is the magma that erupts and builds up, so to speak, at the fault lines where natural human capacities meet and grind against and over natural human limitations…. This meeting of powers and limitations produces a creative, dynamic tension and energy that generates and fuels the making of human social life and social structures…. It is real human persons living through the tensions of natural existential contradictions who construct patterned social meanings, interactions, institutions, and structures. "
― Christian Smith , What Is a Person?: Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up
5
" But clouds bellied out in the sultry heat, the sky cracked open with a crimson gash, spewed flame-and the ancient forest began to smoke. By morning there was a mass of booming, fiery tongues, a hissing, crashing, howling all around, half the sky black with smoke, and the bloodied sun just barely visible. And what can little men do with their spades, ditches, and pails? The forest is no more, it was devoured by fire: stumps and ash. Perhaps illimitable fields will be plowed here one day, perhaps some new, unheard-of wheat will ripen here and men from Arkansas with shaven faces will weigh in their palms the heavy golden grain. Or perhaps a city will grow up-alive with ringing sound and motion, all stone and crystal and iron-and winged men will come here flying over seas and mountains from all ends of the world. But never again the forest, never again the blue winter silence and the golden silence of summer. And only the tellers of tales will speak in many-colored patterned words about what had been, about wolves and bears and stately green-coated century-old grandfathers, about old Russia; they will speak about all this to us who have seen it with our own eyes ten years - a hundred years! - ago, and to those others, the winged ones, who will come in a hundred years to listen and to marvel at it all as at a fairy tale. (" In Old Russia" ) "
10
" I read somewhere that spiders can spin silk strong enough to hold the weight of a thousand trucks. I tried to imagine those lines of silver, thinner than air, stronger than steel. Sometimes I think that a hundred webs, invisible gossamers, connect Gracie and me. They coat our bodies, tie our limbs together, link our hearts. They can stretch across cities, countries – even anger. Unbreakable. I felt them that first time I watched her play soccer.
She needed to win so badly. I watched a new Gracie crack out of her cocoon that day. Grey, moth-like, she seemed covered in a dust that let her take to the air. Fly. They’re beautiful things, moths, with their dark patterned wings hooking on wind to push them forward. You have to be careful with them, though. Brush them just lightly, and they can’t fly anymore. "
― Cath Crowley , The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain (Gracie Faltrain, #1)
13
" She stared at the faded tile floor before her feet, but knew his every step around her small kitchen. When Martin touched the coffee cup patterned curtains he must assume she’d made, her fingers throbbed. When his eyes slid across the flowery aluminum water bottle at the table, her throat cracked with thirst.
The radio clicked off.
The silence of the room soaked up her raspy breaths, her pounding heart, her ache, and stirred them around the one man she ever longed for in a way that changes how you taste the world.
Her desire swirled in a pulsing, betraying, blurry hook, and encouraged him to move closer.
Martin obeyed. "
― Kim Bongiorno , Part of My World
18
" Tragedy's language stresses that whatever is within us is obscure, many faceted, impossible to see. Performance gave this question of what is within a physical force. The spectators were far away from the performers, on that hill above the theatre. At the centre of their vision was a small hut, into which they could not see. The physical action presented to their attention was violent but mostly unseen. They inferred it, as they inferred inner movement, from words spoken by figures whose entrances and exits into and out of the visible space patterned the play. They saw its results when that facade opened to reveal a dead body. This genre, with its dialectics of seen and unseen, inside and outside, exit and entrance, was a simultaneously internal and external, intellectual and somatic expression of contemporary questions about the inward sources of harm, knowledge, power, and darkness. "
― Ruth Padel , In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self
20
" There was a few seconds' pause. Then Amit said: I meant, what were you thinking just now.
When? said Lata.
When you were looking at Pran and Savita. Over the pudding.
Oh.
Well, what?
I can't remember, said Lata with a smile.
Amit laughed.
Why are you laughing? asked Lata
I like making you feel uncomfortable, I suppose.
Oh. Why?
--Or happy--or puzzled--just to see your change of mood. It's such fun. I pity you!
Why? said Lata, startled.
Because you'll never know what a pleasure it is to be in your company.
Do stop talking like that, said Lata. Ma will come in any minute.
You're quite right. In that case: Will you marry me?
Lata dropped her cup. It fell to the floor and broke. She looked at the broken pieces--luckily, it has been empty--and then at Amit.
Quick! said Amit. Before they come running to see what's happened. Say yes.
Lata had knelt down; she was gathering he bits of the cup together and placing them on the delicately patterned blue-and-gold saucer.
Amit joined her on the floor. Her face was only a few inches away from his, but her mind appeared to be somewhere else. he wanted to kiss her but he sensed that there was no question of it. One by one she picked up the shards of china.
Was it a family heirloom? asked Amit.
What? I'm sorry--said Lata, snapped out of her trance by the words.
Well, I suppose I'll have to wait. I was hoping that by springing it on you like that I'd surprise you into agreeing...
...Do stop being idotic, Amit, said Lata. You're so brilliant, do you have to be so stupid as well? I should only take you seriously in black and white.
And in sickness and health.
Lata laughed: For better and for worse, she added. "
― Vikram Seth , A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of Leaves, #1)