Could just see the movements of Miss Winter’s lashes. They crouched and quivered around the eye, like the long legs of a spider around its body.
There are cultures in which it is believed that a name contains all a person’s mystical power. That a name should be known only to God and to the person who holds it and to very few privileged others....
The end of my nine o’clocks was another anchor in time gone.
Reading had never let me down before. It had always been the one sure thing.
People remembered. They wept and they grieved. In the spaces between, they were glad that the leeks were doing well this year, envied the bonnet of the neighbor's cousin, relished the fragrance of por...
Our clients' faces, with the customary outward paleness and inner glow of the book lover.
One of the best ways of avoiding his torments was to be ignorant about something and let him put you straight.
My words flew like birds into a pane of glass.
In speech he stretched out his vowel sounds to give his mouth a rest before the next consonant.
I did not see the wolf when he came. I did not hear him. There was only this: A little before dawn I became aware of a hush, and I realized that the only breathing to be heard in the room was my own.
Half a year—maybe. Something like that. Rita did not look away. Part of her job was to help people look at what was coming. Dying could be lonely. A nurse was often an easier person to talk to than fa...
Emmeline didn't call me anything. She didn't need, for I was always there. You only need names for the absent.
El silencio no es el entorno natural para las historias -me dijo en una ocasión la señorita Winter-. Las historias necesitan palabras. Sin ellas palidecen, enferman y mueren. Y luego te persiguen.
Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes – characters even – ca...
But there can be no secrets in a house where there are children.
Along the borders of this world lie others. There are places you can cross. This is one such place.
The wealth they had accumulated from retail needed to hide its origins, for it is well known that the purity of gold increases the further removed it is from labor.
Remembered the gray cat that had appeared, as if by magic, on her lap. Silently he had sat under her stroking hand, regarding me fixedly with his round yellow eyes. If he saw my ghosts, if he saw my s...
Regretted that he had to comfort me for his own loss.
Reality, the picnickers were sweltering beneath their clothes, the champagne was warm, and if anyone had thought to take their shoes off they would have had to walk through goose droppings. Still, the...