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I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.

Great Expectations. Charles Dickens.

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What it was least possible to get rid of was the cruel idea that whatever I had seen Miles and Flora saw more - things terrible and unguessable

The Turn of the Screw. Henry James.

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Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well dressed till we drop...

The House of Mirth.Edith Wharton.

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The Arcade of the Pont Neuf is not a place for a stroll.

You take it to make a short cut, to gain a few minutes. It is traversed by busy

people whose sole aim is to go quick and straight before them. You see
apprentices there in their working-aprons, work-girls taking home their
work, persons of both sexes with parcels under their arms. There are
also old men who drag themselves forward in the sad gloaming that falls
from the glazed roof, and bands of small children who come to the arcade
on leaving school, to make a noise by stamping their feet on the tiles
as they run along. Throughout the day a sharp hurried ring of footsteps,
resounds on the stone with irritating irregularity. Nobody speaks,
nobody stays there, all hurry about their business with bent heads,
stepping out rapidly, without taking a single glance at the shops. The
tradesmen observe with an air of alarm, the passers-by who by a miracle
stop before their windows.

Therese Raquin. Emile Zola.

When I look at small things,

I think I shall go on living: drops of rain, leather gloves shrunk by being wet...When I look at something too big, I want to die: the Diet Building, or a map of the world...

Abe Kobo.The Box Man: A Novel.

The loves we share with a city

are often secret loves. Old walled towns like Paris, Prague, and even Florence are closed in on themselves and hence limit the world that belongs to them. But Algiers (together with certain other privileged places such as cities on the sea) opens to the sky like a mouth or a wound. In Algiers one loves the commonplace: the sea at the end of every street, a certain volume of sunlight, the beauty of the race. And, as always, in that unashamed offering there is a secret fragrance. In Paris it is possible to be homesick for space and a beating of wings. Here, at least, man is gratified in every wish, and, sure of his desires, can at last measure his possessions.

Probably one has to live in Algiers for some time in order to realize how paralysing an excess of nature's bounty can be. There is nothing here for whoever would learn, educate himself, or better himself. This country has no lessons to teach. It neither promises nor affords glimpses. It is satisfied to give, but in abundance. It is completely accessible to the eyes, and you know it the moment you enjoy it. Its pleasures are without remedy and its joys without hope.

Summer in Algiers. Albert Camus.

There is a type of person

who has a quality about him that sets him apart from other and more ordinary human beings. Such a person has an instinct which is usually found only in small children, an instinct to establish immediate and vital contact between himself and all things in the world.

The Ballad of the Sad Café. Carson McCullers.