Five beautiful paragraphs I read this week

One of the pleasures of summer is space to read things, for no other reason than the words call to you.  This week, I've been reading about place, home and connection. Here are this week’s top five beautiful paragraphs, with links to the originals where possible:

"Everything is unique, nothing happens more than once in a life-time. The physical pleasure which a certain woman gave you at a certain moment, the exquisite dish which you ate on a certain day – you will never meet either again. Nothing is repeated and everything is unparalleled."

The Goncourt Brothers

"The handshake is the threshold act, the beginning of politics. I've seen him do it two million times now, but I couldn't tell you how he does it, the right-handed part of it--the strength, quality, duration of it, the rudiments of pressing the flesh. I can, however, tell you a whole lot about what he does with his other hand. He is a genius with it. He might put it on your elbow, or up by your biceps: these are basic, reflexive moves. He is interested in you. He is honored to meet you. If he gets any higher up your shoulder--if he, say, drapes his left arm over your back, it is somehow less intimate, more casual. He'll share a laugh or a secret then--a light secret, not a real one--flattering you with the illusion of conspiracy. If he doesn't know you all that well and you've just told him something "important," something earnest or emotional, he will lock in and honor you with a two-hander, his left hand overwhelming your wrist and forearm. He'll flash that famous misty look of his. And he will mean it."

Joe Klein, Primary Colors

"She was a woman who couldn't win. If she wore fine fabrics, she was said to be extravagant. If she wore simple fabrics, she was said to be plotting to ruin the Lyon silk trade. But in truth she was all body and no soul: no soul, no sense, no sensitivity."

Hilary Mantel, Royal Bodies

"For who is ever quite without his landscape…a home, the center where the three or four things that happen to a man do happen? Yes, who cannot draw the map of his life, shade in The little station where he meets his loves And says good-bye continually, and mark the spot Where the body of his happiness was first discovered?"

W.H Auden, Detective Story

"As is often the case, the prospect of imminent departure manifested itself as an overwhelming urge to shop”

Geoff Dyer, Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It

What lovely things have you read this week? Take pains to write them down. As paragraph 1 says, you won't read the same loveliness in the same way again.