Love from books

From Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones:

Once more I saw how yellow and bloodshot his eyes were. How sick he was with malaria.  How sick of everything he was.  How sick of being a human being.

"Turn around," he said.  I did as he ordered.

All the lovely things in the world came into view- the gleaming sea, the sky, the trembling green palms.

We were alive, I suppose. That was us moving like ghouls to complete the burial tasks, our mouths and hearts stunned into silence.  I suppose I must have breathed.  I do not know how.  I suppose my heart must have continued to pump blood.  I did not ask it to. If I'd known about a switch to pull in order to turn off the living part, I might have reached for it. 

From The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma:

I have come to believe that it was here that the first mark of the line between Ikenna and Boja- where not even a dot had ever been drawn before- first appeared.

Hope was a tadpole.  The thing you caught and brought home with you in a can , but which, despite being kept in the right water, soon died.

Listen, days decay, like food, like fish, like dead bodies.  This night will decay too, and you will forget.

Then the figure answered and I heard it loud and clear- as if no cause, no bars, no hands, no cuffs, no barriers, no years, no distance, no time had come between the time I last heard his voice and now; as if all the years that had passed were nothing but distance between when a cry was let out and the time it tapered off.  That is: the time I realized it was him and the time I heard him say "It is me, Obe, your brother."