Happiness, like life itself, was as fragile as a bird’s heartbeat, as fleeting as the bluebells in the wood,
Happiness, like life itself, was as fragile as a bird’s heartbeat, as fleeting as the bluebells in the wood, but while it lasted,
Everything changes and nothing remains still. PLATO, Cratylus
Don't you wonder sometimes,' Ursula said. 'If just one small thing had been changed, in the past, I mean. If Hitler had died at birth, or if someone had kidnapped him as a baby and brought him up in--...
Did God get out of bed one morning and draw back the curtains (Reggie's imaginary God led a very domesticated life) and think, 'A drowning in a hotel swimming pool, I fancy. We haven't had that one in...
... Angus had a "pretty normal childhood." Bertie had immediately mistrusted him. Nobody had a normal childhood.
Well, we all get on,’ Sylvie said, ‘one way or another. And in the end we all arrive at the same place. I hardly see that it matters how we get there.’ It
Time isn’t circular, she said to Dr. Kellet. It’s like a… palimpsest.
They were both Filipino and laughed no matter what you said. Were the Philippines really such a happy place or were the carers just happy not to be there?
There was always a second before the siren started when she was aware of a sound as yet unheard. It was like an echo, or rather the opposite of an echo. An echo came afterwards, but was there a word f...
Teddy found himself thinking what a decent human being his father had been, the best of all the family really. The grief caught him unawares.
She wanted to be left alone in peace, to disappear into her own quiet world and meditate upon death. Death. Yes, she could form that blunt, obscene word too. But instead she was the one who was going...
She prayed now, with desperate conviction but no faith, and she suspected it made no difference either way. When
Perhaps we are on an insula ex machina, an artificial place not in the real world at all -- a backdrop for the stories we must tell.
Nothing could be kept, he thought, everything ran through one’s fingers like sand or water. Or time. Perhaps nothing should be kept. A monkish thought that he dismissed.
Mitä ovat todelliset rikokset? Kapitalismi, uskonto, seksi? Murha - yleensä mutta ei välttämättä. Varkaus - samoin. Mutta julmuus ja välinpitämättömyys ovat myös rikoksia. Samoin huonot tavat ja tunte...
Marriage is based on a more enduring kind of love.
Kittens were in continual abundance on the farm, there was a kind of kitten currency in the neighborhood, they were bartered for all kinds of emotional regret or fulfillment by parents - a doll lost,...
Juliet felt slighted yet relieved. It was curious how you could hold two quite opposing feelings at the same time, an unsettling emotional discord. She felt an odd pang at the sight of him. She had be...
Julia's vocabulary was chock-full of strangely archaic words - spiffing, crumbs, jeepers - that seemed to have originated in some prewar girls' annual rather than in Julia's own life. For Jackson, wor...