Who could refrain / That had a heart to love, and in that heart / Courage to make’s love known?

Macbeth

Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe.

The Bluest Eye

How long did we stay there? I don't remember: what did time matter? Marceline was beside me; I stretched out, laid my head on her knees. The flute song flowed on still, breaking off an instant or two, then resuming; the noise of the water . . . Now and then a goat bleated. I closed my eyes; I felt Marceline's cool hand resting on my forehead; I  ( Read more... )

She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

This is about choosing. Can you understand? Please attempt to. You are the only person who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.

Everything is Illuminated

It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything all right. It didn't make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight.

But I'll take it . With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake ( Read more... )

It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same - everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet ( Read more... )

And he said goodbye to her in spanish and then turned and put on his hat and turned his wet face to the wind and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or the rich or poor or dark or ( Read more... )

At the end of my dream, Eve put the apple back on the branch. The tree went back into the ground. It became a sapling, which became a seed.
God brought together the land and the water, the sky and the water, the water and the water, evening and morning, something and nothing.
He said, Let there be light.
And there was darkness.

Extremely Loud and ( Read more... )

I watch as thin girders of blue light start glowing, as the light turns yellow, pink, orange, as it spreads across the horizon. The sun appears, slowly rising, an edge, quarter, half circle. It becomes full and red, envelopes the sky, dominates it. It makes the monuments of this city, of any city every city, seem small and insignificant. It makes ( Read more... )