Days We Have Seen

'Quo Vadis?' I asked myself, "Where are you going?" The answer was that I was following my heart; that I felt there was a 'rightness' about what I was doing that was unshakeable. 

~Peter Moore

The Count of Monte Cristo

It was a lovely starlight night--they had just reached the top of the hill Villejuif, the platform from whence Paris, like some dark sea, is seen to agitate its millions of lights, resembling phosphoric waves,--waves indeed, more noisy, more passionate, more changeable, more furious, more greedy, than those of the tempestuous ocean,--waves which never lie calm, like those of the vast sea,--waves ever destructive, ever foaming, and ever restless. 

~Alexandre Dumas

The Colossus of New York

Disappear into a crowd. It's right there in the city charter: we have the right to disappear. The city rushes to hide all traces. It's the law. 

~Colson Whitehead

The Colossus of New York

Do not tire. Do not falter. Listen up because I'm only going to say this once: We need all our monuments, no matter what size, carved stone or mortal clay. Do not doubt you inspire with every breath, that every breath is a marvel of engineering. Deserve everything. 

~Colson Whitehead

The Colossus of New York

The background says it all: against that skyline we are as brief as a camera flash. Blinded for seconds. But then it returns. That jaw at the foot of the island and its hungry teeth. 

~Colson Whitehead 

Why We Broke Up

In the bathroom mirror there was even a smudge of dirt on my neck, and I wiped it off in a hurried flush, the cheap paper towel so rough against my skin that I looked for a scrape in my reflection and then, meeting my own eyes, stood for a sec and tried to figure, like all girls in all mirrors everywhere, the difference between lover and slut. 

~Daniel Handler

Essays in Idleness

Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for the moon while looking on the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of spring-- these are even more deeply moving. Branches about to bloom or gardens strewn with faded flowers are worthier of our admiration--in all things, it is the beginnings and endings that are interesting...If man were never to die away but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us. The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.

~Yoshida Kenko