mmmm.

"He always felt naked, seen."

"She had felt the shame of a child who sees a grown-up suddenly caught in the act of chasing a butterfly over fields and roads."

"She felt weak, exhilaratingly weak, before the man."

"The first reaction was a vision of peace regained. Soon, however, she was restless, like a person who misses something without knowing, in particular, what he has lost. She started growing flowers with a new vigour."

"Margery inclined her head on his shoulder as if she wished he would carry her with him to those lands he talked about. He did."

"Suddenly I felt my life was coming to a cul-de-sac."

"A man was born to die continually and start afresh."

"Those were words from no ordinary heart."

"The train became an obsession: if you missed it, sorrow seized your heart for the rest of the week; you longed for the next train. Then Sunday came, you went there on time, and immediately you were healed."

"The rattling train always thrilled her. At times she longed to be the train itself... Her dark eyes had a dreamy look that longed for something the village could not give. She lay in the sun and ardently yearned for a life in which love and heroism, suffering, and martyrdom were possible. She was young... In the Old Testament she often saw herself as Esther: so she revelled in that moment when Esther finally answers King Ahasuerus' question and dramatically points at Haman, saying: The adversary and enemy is the wicked Haman."

"Nights followed days with a severe regularity."

"The crowd made a harmony: there's something beautiful and moving in the spectacle of a large mass of people seated in an orderly disorder."

--A Grain of Wheat, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o