Alongside my mispronunciation of , and in seventeen languages, and my ability to recite the Greek alphabet forward and backward (I who have never learned a word of Greek in my life), the phonetic al...
Ten years of marriage is usually enough to cure marital affection, but Angelfield was an odd fellow, and there it was.
People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think of them.
Turquoise-and-green cloth that cloaked her body did not soften the rigidity of her frame. Her bright copper hair had been arranged into an elaborate confection of twists, curls and coils. Her face, as...
The joys of coauthoring a research paper, it is really time to go to bed.
She could not be less than seventy-three or -four, and to judge by her appearance, altered though it was by illness and makeup, she could be no more than eighty.
Remember pondering for a long time over a dish of scrambled egg. What did it mean? It could mean anything. I ate a few mouthfuls and pushed the plate away. In this long, undifferentiated lapse of time...
On a summer day winter always seems like something you have dreamt or heard spoken of and not a thing you have lived.
When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic, yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.
What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shad...
There are stories that may be told aloud, and stories that must be told in whispers, and there are stories that are never told at all.
The rook is a skilled survivor. He is ancient and has inhabited the planet longer than humans. This you can tell from his singing voice: his cry is harsh and grating, made for a more ancient world tha...
The night I was found there was a big fire here. Mrs. Love told me so, when I was nine. She thought she should, because of the smell of smoke on my clothes when she found me. Later I came over to have...
The cat was on the window ledge, gazing intently into the garden.
That first second was long and confusing. The second, when it finally came, was sudden. The figure froze . . . swiveled . . . rose . . . and I knew. Miss Winter’s eyes. Brilliant, supernatural green....
So they became friends, the way old married couples often do, and enjoyed the tender loyalty that awaits the lucky on the other side of passion, without ever living the passion itself.
Pigs are remarkable creatures and, though most men are too blind to see it, have intelligence that they show in their eyes.
Of course I loved books more than people. Of course I valued Jane Eyre over the anonymous stranger...Of course all of Shakespeare was worth more than a human life.
Not even a ghost could survive here.
It doesn't do to get attached to these secondary characters. It's not their story. They come and go, and when they go, they're gone for good.