We went back into the drawing room. The evening had passes pleasantly enough, heaven knows, but I was glad that they had gone and the house was silent once again. She must have had the same thought, f...
We know one another. This is the present. There is no past and no future. Here I am washing my hands, and the cracked mirror shows me to myself, suspended as it were, in time; this is me, this moment...
We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.
Un mēs izšķiedīsim pēdējos mirkļus, smiedamies par kādu svešinieku, jo mēs jau būsim sveši viens otram.
Three years of marriage, he said, and the dishwasher means more to your conjugal life than the double bed I’m throwing in for good measure. I warned you it wouldn’t last. The marriage, I mean, not the...
This was my picture, and I wanted to become part of it too, to sleep there with the others on the shore, but they would not let me. I had to go away and live my life. I had no business to remain there...
This astonished us as children, for we grew up beside the charcoal burners, called them by their Christian names, watched them at work, visited them in their log huts when they were ill; but to my mot...
Think of the unkind things we have forgotten, said Niall. Those are the ones that will be totted up against us. I sometimes wake up in the early morning and go quite cold thinking of all the things I...
They’ve been drinking too, said Pappy, examining the tooth-glass. Cognac, judging by the smell. I never knew my daughter drank. She doesn’t, said Celia, smoothing Pappy’s bed. She always has orangeade...
They were all fitting into place, the jig-saw pieces. The odd strained shapes that I had tried to piece together with my fumbling fingers and they had never fitted. Frank's odd manner when I spoke abo...
They say death does this to us once we are warned. Unconsciously, we strive not to waste time. Pettiness falls away, with all those things of little value in our lives. Could we but have known sooner,...
There’s no need to get that way. It’s your own thoughts that keep you young, Dick. And age hasn’t anything to do with it. It’s a question of your state of mind. I don’t care about all that. Oh! Jake—i...
There was something strangely peaceful about the house, something very rare and difficult to define. It was like a house in an old tale, discovered by the hero one evening in midsummer. In the tale th...
There are some women, Philip, good women very possibly, who through no fault of their own impel disaster. Whatever they touch, somehow turns to tragedy.
The trouble is, the children have no imagination. They are sweet, and have carefree, honest eyes; but they have not any magic in their day. The magic has all gone…
The streets were narrow and evil-smelling, with a broad stream running down the center to carry the sewage, and beggars holding out their hands for alms. I remember my sudden feeling of fright when my...
The spaniel came up to me, sniffing at my legs, and I bent down and stroked his ears. Well, Micky, I said, you surely remember me? Poor old Micky, good old Micky. Micky has got very fat, said my mothe...
The people don’t want to be understood, it would spoil their sense of injustice. They revel in their wrongs
Suddenly I saw a clearing in the dark drive ahead, and a patch of sky, and in a moment the dark trees had thinned, the nameless shrubs had disappeared, and on either side of us was a wall of colour, b...
So you see, when eat comes to one's own village, one's own doorstep, it isn't tragic and impersonal any longer. It's just an excuse to vomit private hatred.