Where do they go, Sophie, those younger selves of ours? How do they vanish and dissolve?’ ‘They don’t,’ I said. ‘They’re with us always, like little shadows, ghosting us through life.
When Stephen talked about stalking chamois his whole expression changed. The features became more aquiline, the nose sharpened, the chin narrowed, and his eyes-steel blue - somehow took on the cold br...
What a moment to bring a child into the world, that summer of ’93, the first year of the Republic; with the Vendée in revolt, the country at war, the traitorous Girondins endeavoring to bring down the...
We're not meant for happiness, you and I.
We were dreamers, both of us, unpractical, reserved, full of great theories never put to test, and like all dreamers, asleep to the waking world. Disliking our fellow men, we craved affection; but shy...
We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, strug...
Watch that boy. He's going to startle somebody someday.
There is no going back in life, no return, no second chance. I cannot call back the spoken word or the accomplished deed.
The soft humidity of the evening, so pleasant to walk about in earlier, had turned to rain. The strolling tourists had melted away. One or two people hurried by under umbrellas. This is what the inhab...
The point is, life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem.
The carriages and the folk who rode in them, gorgeously if sometimes absurdly attired, had made a kind of magic, and given a fairy-tale glitter to the capital. Now it seemed just like any other city,
Something we always want and never have. Something that is forever out of reach.
She wondered if this was how a ship felt when the security of harbor was left behind. No vessel could feel more desolate than she did, not even if the wind thundered in the rigging and the sea licked...
Seen on her own, the woman was not so remarkable. Tall, angular, aquiline features, with the close-cropped hair which was fashionably called an Eton crop, he seemed to remember, in his mother's day, a...
On the table there, polished now and plain, an ugly case would stand containing butterflies and moths, and another one with bird's eggs wrapped in cotton wool. Not all this junk in here, I would say,...
No, it was done with and finished. Escape was a thing of yesterday.
Nature had come into her own again, and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way, had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers.
Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy, even upon a dreamer's fancy.
Je me sentais vaguement épuisée et me demandai, un peu choquée de ma cruauté, pourquoi les personnes âgées étaient si exténuantes. Pires que les jeunes enfants [...] car il fallait se montrer poli.
I’ll not bide in Heaven, nor rest here in my grave. My spirit will linger with the ones I love—an’ when they’re sorrowful and feared in themselves, I’ll come to them; and God Himself won’t keep me.