That Is How They Were: They Spent Their Lives Proclaiming Their Proud Origins, The Historic Merits Of

That is how they were: they spent their lives proclaiming their proud origins, the historic merits of the city, the value of its relics, its heroism, its beauty, but they were blind to the decay of the years. Dr. Juvenal Urbino, on the other hand, loved it enough to see it with the eyes of truth.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (via wholesomeobsessive)

‘It was…,’ he starts, stumbling on a rock in the path, then starts again: 'It was about a middle-aged gay man walking around San Francisco.  And, you know, his…his sorrows…'  Her face has begun to fold inward in a dubious expression, and he finds himself trailing off.  From the front of the group, the journalists are shouting in Arabic. Zohra askes, 'Is it a white middle-aged man?’ 'Yes.’ 'A white middle-aged American man walking around with his white middle-aged American sorrows?’ 'Jesus, I guess so.’ 'Arthur.  Sorry to tell you this.  It’s a little hard to feel sorry for a guy like that.’ 'Even gay?’ 'Even gay.’ 'Bugger off.'  He did not know he was going to say this. She stops walking, points at his chest, and grins.  'Good for you,’ she says.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

Less feels on the verge of an understanding about life and death and the passage of time, an ancient and perfectly obvious understanding, when a British voice intervenes: ‘Okay, sorry to be a bother, just want to make sure.  Once again.  It’s Ait…’

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

Just for the record: happiness is not bullshit.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

‘Where’s Dunsey, then? What do you stand talking there for? Go and fetch Dunsey, as I tell you, and let him give account of what he wanted the money for, and what he’s done with it. He shall repent it. I’ll turn him out. I said I would, and I’ll do it. He shan’t brave me. Go and fetch him.’ ‘Dunsey isn’t come back, sir.’ 'What! did he break his own neck, then?’ said the Squire, with some disgust at the idea that, in that case, he could not fulfil his threat.

Silas Marner by George Eliot (via wholesomeobsessive)

North of the transverse gap, he drove into the huge sink of Candor Chasma, and now it was as if he were in a gigantic replica of the Painted Desert, with great deposition layers everywhere, bands of purple and yellow sediment, orange dunes, red erratics, pink sands, indigo gullies; truly a fantastic, extravagant landscape, disorienting to the eye because all the wild colors made it hard to figure out what was what, and how big it was, and how far away. Giant plateaus that seemed about to block his way would turn out to be curving strata on a distant cliff; small boulders next to the transponders would turn out to be enormous mesas half a day’s drive away. And in the sunset light all the colors blazed, the whole martian spectrum revealed and blazing as if color was bursting out of the rock, everything from pale yellow to dark bruised purple.

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (via wholesomeobsessive)