Mandi

“I suffered from an absence, though I was happy with the many ghosts of a presence.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“A hot dead wind drifted in great puffs through the city, and ragged masses of vapor swept the purple sky; an unsavory night altogether, one of those nights of hopeless lassitude when one feels, if one is at home, like doing nothing but drink mint juleps and smoke cigarettes.”
― Ralph Adams Cram, No. 252 Rue M. Le Prince

“Down crumbling desert slopes
and wind-wrought shapes of dusty stone;
Where the sandy fur of the meer cat scrapes lightly through the sod-cut tunnels;
Into heights of wispy thoughts and layered twilights,
Where red-eyed hawks lie flat on soft winds;
Dreams, born and living,
Have but one soul:
Yours.”
― Tara K. Harper

“There's a strange contradiction revealed by the naivete and kindness demonstrated by humanity when faced with the universe: On Earth, humankind can step onto another continent, and without a though, destroy the kindred civilizations found there through warfare and disease. But when they gaze up at the stars, they turn sentimental and believe that if extraterrestrial intelligences exist, they must be civilizations bound by universal, noble, moral constraints, as if cherishing and loving different forms of life are parts of a self-evident universal code of conduct.”
― Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem