"Finally he returned and found the canal he’d sailed. He walked a time along the canal, dumbstruck by its clarity and the color possible here. Amid the dust and the buildings that might never be, and the sand forever trying to overtake it all, there was this immaculate thread of turquoise, an irrational color, an unnecessary color. People had not made the color, but they had helped it to occur here. They had built something and the water had flowed and so people had brought bewildering beauty into a place in which it did not belong."

— Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King