WHERE BEAUTY RESIDES/ Abraham Verghese
He wants to talk about Celeste, but of course he’s never mentioned her, or the excursion, never uttered her name to another. Honorine laughs, shouting back, “Roses would be annoying weeds if the blooms never withered and died. Beauty resides in the knowledge that it doesn’t last.” Well, Jeb surely knows that, Digby thinks. But does Rose? And if beauty is in the ephemeral, what about the beautiful things you can’t have? Perhaps that kind of beauty does last forever.
Among the eternal species/Michel Houellebecq
There had indeed been something in this person, as far as he could remember, which could arouse affection, and even the existence of “his loved ones”; something that did not exist in Houellebecq’s home, and neither in his case: a kind of familiarity with life. In this indirect way, as it were by cross-checking, Jed became aware that he had just turned sixty. Surprisingly, he wasn’t aware that he had aged so much. We become aware of our aging through relationships with others and their lives. One always tends to see oneself among the eternal species. To be sure, his hair had turned white. His face had become wrinkled. But all this had been done gradually, without anything directly confronting him with the images of his youth. This incongruity struck him.
