Amiya

“There on the dune, beside the table, one of the camel boys has his arm around the other, and they sit there like that as they watch the sun. The dunes are turning the same shades of adobe and aqua as the buildings of Marrakech. Two boys, arms around each other. To Less, it seems so foreign. It makes him sad. In his world, he never sees straight men doing this. Just as a gay couple cannot walk hand in hand down the streets of Marrakech, he thinks, two men, best friends, cannot walk hand in hand down the streets of Chicago. They cannot sit on a dune like these teenagers and watch a sunset in each other’s embrace. This Tom Sawyer love for Huck Finn.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, Less

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
― Rumi

“How can so many things become a bore by middle age — philosophy, radicalism, and other fast foods — but heartbreak keeps its sting?”
― Andrew Sean Greer, Less

“We all recognize grief in moments that should be celebrations; it is the salt in the pudding. Didn't Roman generals hire slaves to march beside them in a triumphant parade and remind them that they too would die? Even your narrator, one morning after what should have been a happy occasion, was found shivering at the end of the bed (spouse: "I really wish you weren't crying right now"). Don't little children, awakened one morning and told, "Now you're five!" - don't they wail at the universe's descent into chaos? The sun slowly dying, the spiral arm spreading, the molecules drifting apart second by second toward our inevitable heat death - shouldn't we all wail to the stars?”
― Andrew Sean Greer, Less