Ari

“[English] fails me utterly when I attempt to describe what I love about Greek, that language innocent of all quirks and cranks; a language obsessed with action, and with the joy of seeing action multiply from action, action marching relentlessly ahead and with yet more actions filing in from either side to fall into neat step at the rear, in a long straight rank of cause and effect toward what will be inevitable, the only possible end.”
― Donna Tartt

“Because I could not stop for death
he kindly stopped for me
I asked to see a photograph
confirming his identity

The faces matched - the eyes were warm -
the hair was long and grey -
both smiled but as I tried to move
death blocked my way.

No no, my sweetheart, what's the rush?
Come on, let's go to bed,
there's time for love, there's surely time
for happiness - death said.

His voice was soft, his skin was pale,
his fingers brushed my face -
Oh? time for love? I said - but where?
He said: I know a place.

He led me down a flowered track
and on a bank of earth
he loved me till my body screamed
from every living nerve.

I slept then for eternity
drugged as I was with love:
death bent down to my sleeping face
and on earth's pillow made a place
to leave his photograph.”
― Martin Crimp, Cyrano de Bergerac: in a free adaptation

“Let us take a man - a very ordinary man. A man with no idea of murder in his heart. There is in him somewhere a strain of weakness - deep down. It has so far never been called into play... But let us suppose that something occurs... He may stumble by accident on a secret - a secret involving life or death to someone. And his first impulse will be to speak out - to do his duty as an honest citizen. And then the strain of weakness tells... That is the beginning... He is not the same man he was - say, a year ago. His moral fibre is blunted. He is desperate. He is fighting a losing battle, and he is prepared to take any means that come to his hand, for exposure means ruin to him. And so - the dagger strikes... Afterwards, the dagger removed, he will be himself again, normal, kindly. But if the need again arises, then once more he will strike.”
― Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

“It is so easy for an Englishman to sneer at these chance collisions of human beings. To the insular cynic and the insular moralist they offer an equal opportunity. It is so easy to talk of 'passing emotion', and to forget how vivid the emotion was ere it passed. Our impulse to sneer, to forget, is at root a good one. We recognize that emotion is not enough, and that men and women are personalities capable of sustained relations, not mere opportunities for an electrical discharge. Yet we rate the impulse too highly. We do not admit that by collisions of this trivial sort the doors of heaven may be shaken open.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End