Then in the darkness and purity of the meadows he began to feel that the world had many secrets, that they were shattering even to glimpse or sense, and that they were not necessarily unpleasant. In c...
She felt as if she knew the stars, and had been among them, or would be.
Physical features count little unless they are illumined from within.
People in my constituency are starving and born with sixteen fingers. Did you ever eat weasel shish-kebob? Freddy doesn’t walk by the side of the motorways to gather dandelions for his salad, but the...
No matter what it is, if you don’t move your eyes and set the pace yourself, your intellect is sentenced to death. The mind, you see, is like a muscle. For it to remain agile and strong, it must work....
Lower [plane] than one of those who perished. It was their war, not mine. I was able to walk out of it, leave it behind. Though God preserved me, the best stories were theirs, and these were cut short...
Little men, he once said, spend their days in pursuit of such things. I know from experience that at the moment of their deaths they see their lives shattered before them like glass. I’ve seen them di...
I’ve had a profession for a number of years, and it has mastered me. A profession is like a great snake that wraps itself around you. Once you are enwrapped, you are in a slow fight for the rest of yo...
It was a good speech, but the reaction was due to the fact that politics are madness, and even if one does not know it, a country in electoral season experiences flares of lunacy like the great storms...
I wanted the music to be full, to surround us, to lift us like the swell, so I rented a bloody orchestra. You only live once.
I don't want an ambulance. I want you to sit down and shut up. But Signore, an ambulance could take you to a hospital. They could help you. I don't want to die in a hospital. You wouldn't! You'd live!...
How, in good conscience, Alessandro asked, can you ride across the countryside in perfect safety, as if you were on holiday, stopping mainly to swim and eat oysters, while men are crushed and pulveriz...
Hoheit, do you know why crows are black? No, I never thought of it. They taste lousy, and they're black as a sure sign to predators that they're crows, who will taste lousy. Why aren't they yellow? Th...
He thought only of one thing--the geometries before him. Here was God speaking in His simple absolute language, according to the same grammar that He had used to start the planets on their smooth and...
He paused. Perhaps he had a son. He intoned their names, and then he said, I sentence you to death. The sentence shall be carried out by firing squad, at the customary time, in the execution yard of t...
Harry understood that those left behind—the failures and the deformed, the suffering and the dead—are not just equal in soul, but that they are we and we are they. Struggle as we may for distinction,...
For someone who is happy, celebration is yet another channel or instrument through which happiness may course. For someone who is not, celebration is a tedious parody of existence that seems pointless...
For instance, she spoke of certain kinds of dogs as Leviners. She called the areas near Quebec march-lands. She referred to diclesiums, liripoops, rapparees, dagswains, bronstrops, caroteels, opuntias...
As the clockwork of the millennia moved a notch in front of their eyes, it had taken their thoughts from small things and reminded them of how vulnerable they were to time.
Alessandro, his father said, almost cheerfully. You don't understand. This kind of problem is very special: it has no solution