There was a vase of flame-coloured tulips in the hall - surely the most graceful of flowers. Some thrust their heads forward like snakes, and some were very erect, stiff, virginal, rather prim. Some w...
The rumble of the life outside was like the sound of the sea which was rising gradually around her.
The last time you were happy about nothing; the first time you were afraid about nothing. Which came first?
The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still. Like when they say, As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
The Place Blanche, Paris, Life itself. One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.
Satin skin, silk hair, velvet eyes, sawdust heart - all complete.
Lois doesn't want to be given away; she doesn't want anybody to know, and I assure you that that's all she cares about. Of course, she'll be furious if anybody knows, and that's why if you go off in a...
It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?
I would never be part of anything. I would never really belong anywhere, and I knew it, and all my life would be the same, trying to belong, and failing. Always something would go wrong. I am a strang...
I watched her die many times. In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty. Only the sun was there to keep us company....
I have tried, I said, but he does not believe me. It is too late for that now (it is always too late for truth, I thought).
I can remember every second of that morning, if I shut my eyes I can see the deep blue colour of the sky and the mango leaves, the pink and red hibiscus, the yellow handkerchief she wore around her he...
Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights. Since I was born, hasn't every word I've said, every thought I've thought, everything I've done, bee...
But in the daytime it was all right. And when you'd had a drink you knew it was the best way to live in the world because anything might happen. I don't know how people live when they know exactly wha...
All that is left in the world is an enormous machine, made of white steel. It has innumerable flexible arms, made of steel. Long, thin arms. At the end of each arm is an eye, the eyelashes stiff with...
That expression you get in your eyes when you are very tired and everything is like a dream and you are starting to know what things are like underneath what people say they are.
When my first love affair came to an end I wrote this poem: I didn't knowI didn't knowI didn't know.
The car stopped. Everybody walked in a short procession up to the chapel of the Crematorium, where a clergyman with very bright blue yes was waiting. That was a dream, too, but a painful dream, becaus...
THe room was large and low-ceilinged, the striped wallpaper faded to inoffensiveness. A huge dark wardrobe faced a huge dark bed. The rest of the furniture shrank away into corners, battered and apolo...
Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible - the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living sme...