By this time, no matter how hard he tried to understand, Nicolò’s eyes had begun to glaze, but Alessandro had no fear of bending green cane, because he knew it seldom broke. Remember this, then—even i...
But you won’t abdicate.Of course not. It’s my duty to go on, to maintain the line. I can’t possibly fail in that. It’s as if you and I were throwing a ball back and forth to establish a record, and ha...
But the long tunnels of art through which I walked in Rome that day had no ragged edges, cowardly colors, or shades of pastel that didn't know what to do with themselves. The wisdom, perfection, and b...
But each time he received an invitation from the Harvard Club to join…he postponed his application for the time when he could do little but rest in the kind of comfortable chair that is to the end of...
Breathing, for example, was never taken for granted, since, half the time, thanks to the many chemical works and refineries, it was nearly impossible.
Because no windows were open and the air was so still and cold that the trees dared not move for fear of encountering more of it than they had to, Christiana thought that she had entered a city of the...
As they rolled over the marshes before Venice, he fell back in his seat, windburnt and exhausted, and noticed that the bottle of water, but for its slight and elegant blue tint, was the smoothest, cle...
As he passed people rushing by the scores of thousands on the streets, he saw the glory of their faces. He saw in the way their eyes were set--in their reddened cheeks, and in their expressions of hop...
And then he was suddenly overwhelmed. It was as if a thousand bolts of lightning had converged to lift him. All he could see was blue, electric blue, wet shining warm blue, blue to no end, everywhere,...
And then I went out to the ocean. Do you know what it was like? The waves broke, and each time they did, as they slapped against the sand, I could feel it all through my body. And each time they broke...
And how does God speak to you?In the language of everything that is beautiful.
Alessandro said, Most people don't do this, but it's what saves you. It tests you in the right way. Only for war, Rafi added. We'll almost certainly never have to go to war. It's unlikely that a war w...
Alessandro learned yet again that the joy of escape is better than the joy of merely being free.
A young girl, a frailty, simple and true, who had been unable to stand up from the piano and had had to be carried; a girl half his age; a girl who could not shoot a gun, had never been in an oyster h...
. . you can't do anything absolutely by reason. That's because reason depends on postulates. Postulates defy proof and yet they are essential to reason.
Your materialism will make you suffer terribly not only at the end but also on the way.
You'll be shot, they cautioned. No. I won't be shot. I'm going to shoot them, and then I'll go home. I'll be perfectly safe. I can see the future, and the clouds are lifting. You can see the future? H...
When I got back to Rome I discovered that the Italian army considered me dead—in Gruensee, in the observation post, and on the Cima Bianca. That I was reported killed three times seemed not to affect...
Watching the children, he noticed two things especially. A girl of about five, and her sister, who was no more than three, wanted to drink from the pebbled concrete fountain at the playground’s edge,...
Though Mrs. Gamely was by all measures prescientific and illiterate, she did know words. Where she got them was anyone's guess, but she certainly had them. Virginia speculated that the people on the n...