62
" We had bought a kilo of cherries and we were eating them as we walked along. We were both insufferably childish and high-spirited that afternoon and th spectacle we presented, two grown men, jostling each other on the wide sidewalk, and aiming the cherry-pips, as though they were spitballs, into each other's facesm must have been outrageous. And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon. And, watching his face, I realized that it meant much to me that I could make his face so bright. I saw that I might be willing to give a great deal not to lose that power. And I felt myself flow toward him, as a river rushes when the ice breaks up. "
― James Baldwin , Giovanni's Room
63
" For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk. "
― Jürgen Habermas
67
" Do women always take this long?” Darién sprang forward to find out what was keeping his bride, but Maxim, Shara and Serone stepped in front of him, blocking his path.
“She’s late!” the prince fumed, his heart pounding, and his breathing ragged. “Maybe she changed her mind,” he said before Maxim snapped a picture of him with a digital camera, blinding him. “What the hell?” Darién shook his head to clear the momentary stun from the flash.
Maxim shrugged nonchalantly, his wicked dark eyes glittering with humor, “Aleta put me in charge of photography--something about making a scrapbook…or whatever. Anyway…nothing says good times like a stressed-out groom on the verge of nuclear.” He smiled, wagging his dark brows up and down. “Priceless. "
― Beth Mikell , The Nysein: Salvation
71
" They were happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set made Cam happy for days. She heard them stamping and crowing on the floor above her head the moment they woke. They came bustling along the passage. Then the door sprang open and in they came, fresh as roses, staring, wide awake, as if this coming into the dining-room after was a positive event to them, and so on, with one thing after another, all day long, until she went up to say good-night to them, and found them netted in their cots like birds among cherries and raspberries, still making up stories about some little bit of rubbish-–something they heard, something they had picked up in the garden. They had all their little treasures. . . And so she went down and said to her husband, Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again. And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd; and he believed it to be true; that with all his gloom and desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the whole, than she was. Less exposed to human worries––perhaps that was it. He had always his work to fall back on. "
― Virginia Woolf , To the Lighthouse
72
" Then headed for the kitchen.Fuck.I headed through the lounge……just as two indistinct pitch-black masses, Kevlar laden, shotguns raised, crept ninja-like through the front door. This time, I didn't even get a bellowed warning. The lead ninja, upon seeing me, sprang forward… and crushed me face flat to the floor.That hurt.It was five long hard seconds before he eased up an iota so I could take a breath," Hello again, Dennis. Busy night?" I managed from somewhere under his arm or knee or gun-butt. " Bean-bags or bullets?" " Bullets," said Harry. " Easy up, lads. He's scarpered…" Dennis got off of me, locked his shotgun and helped me up," Sorry," he said." No worries… "
78
" I watched bulls bred to cows, watched mares foal, I saw life come from the egg and the multiplicative wonders of mudholes and ponds, the jell and slime of life shimmering in gravid expectation. Everywhere I looked, life sprang from something not life, insects unfolded from sacs on the surface of still waters and were instantly on prowl for their dinner, everything that came into being knew at once what to do and did it, unastonished that it was what it was, unimpressed by where it was, the great earth heaving up bloodied newborns from every pore, every cell, bearing the variousness of itself from every conceivable substance which it contained in itself, sprouting life that flew or waved in the wind or blew from the mountains or stuck to the damp black underside of rocks, or swam or suckled or bellowed or silently separated in two. "
― E.L. Doctorow , Lives of the Poets: A Novella and Six Stories
79
" He had come to that moment in his age when there occurred to him, with increasing intensity, a question of such overwhelming simplicity that he had no means to face it. He found himself wondering if his life were worth the living; if it had ever been. It was a question, he suspected, that came to all men at one time or another; he wondered if it came to them with such impersonal force as it came to him. The question brought with it a sadness, but it was a general sadness which (he thought) had little to do with himself or with his particular fate; he was not even sure that the question sprang from the most immediate and obvious causes, from what his own life had become. It came, he believed, from the accretion of his years, from the density of accident and circumstance, and from what he had come to understand of them. He took a grim and ironic pleasure from the possibility that what little learning he had managed to acquire had led him to this knowledge: that in the long run all things, even the learning that let him know this, were futile and empty, and at last diminished into a nothingness they did not alter. "
― John Williams , Stoner
80
" When Aziza first spotted Mariam in the morning, her eyes always sprang open, and she began mewling and squirming in her mother's grip. She thrust her arms toward Mariam, demanding to be held, her tiny hands opening and closing urgently, on her face a look of both adoration and quivering anxiety. " What a scene you're making," Laila would say, releasing her to crawl toward Mariam. " What a scene! Calm down. Khala Mariam isn't going anywhere. There she is, your aunt. See? Go on, now." As soon as she was in Mariam's arms, Aziza's thumb shot into her mouth and she buried her face in Mariam's neck. Mariam bounced her stiffly, a half-bewildered, half-grateful smile on her lips. Mariam had never before been wanted like this. Love had never been declared to her so guilelessly, so unreservedly.Aziza made Mariam want to weep." Why have you pinned your little heart to an old, ugly hag like me?" Mariam would murmur into Aziza's hair. " Huh? I am nobody, don't you see? A dehati. What have I got to give you?" But Aziza only muttered contentedly and dug her face in deeper. And when she did that, Mariam swooned. Her eyes watered. Her heart took flight. And she marvelled at how, after all these years of rattling loose, she had found in this little creature the first true connection in her life of false, failed connections. "