Dorrigo glimpsed a complex mud of intimacies normally invisible to the world—the shared sleep, scents, sounds, the habits endearing and frustrating, the pleasures and sadnesses, small and large—the pl...
Darky ate slowly, enjoying every morsel, his mouth salivating so wildly that he worried at the loud sloshing sound he made. But it was lost in all the other wet noises of the night.
إن البشر ليسوا إلا واحداً من أشياء كثيرة، وكل هذه الأشياء تتوق لأن تعيش، وإن أعلى شكل من أشكال الحياة هو الحرية: الحرية في أن يكون الرجل رجلاً، وفي أن تكون الغيمة غيمة، وفي أن يكون الخيزران خيزراناً
The tormented, hopeless feeling of two people who lived together in a love not yet love, nor yet not; an unshared life shared; a conspiracy of affections, illnesses, tragedies, jokes and labour; a mar...
In the back seat the three now silent, soot-smeared children absorbed it all—the choking creosote stench, the roar of wind and flame, the wild rocking of a car being driven that hard, the heat, the em...
And they were deeply moved not so much by the poetry as by their sensitivity to poetry; not so much by the genius of the poem as by their wisdom in understanding the poem; not in knowing the poem but...
There grew between him and Ella a conspiracy of experience, as if the raising of children, the industry of supporting each other in ways practical and tender, and the sum of years and then decades of...
Horror can be contained within a book, given form and meaning. But in life horror has no more form than it does meaning. Horror just is. And while it reigns, it is as if there is nothing in the univer...
He read books. He liked none of them. He searched their pages for Amy. She was not there. He went to parties. They bored him. He walked the streets, gazing into strangers' faces. Amy was not there. Th...
He loved his family. But he was not proud of them. Their principal achievement was survival. It would take him a lifetime to appreciate what an achievement that was.
He had the sourdough smell of age. His chest sagged into shrivelled teats; his lovemaking was unreliable, yet she found it strangely wholesome in a way that defied sense.
He had avoided what he regarded as some obvious errors of life, such as politics and golf.
He had avoided what he regarded as some obvious errors of life, such as politics and golf. But
Evans understood that if Nakamura chose, it would be indiscriminately and their number would include the sickest—and perhaps most likely the sickest, because they were of least use to Nakamura—and tha...
Days and months are travellers of eternity. So too the years that pass by
Being prisoner great shame. Great! Redeem honour building railway for Emperor. Great honour. Great!
As the cards fluttered to earth, as everyone’s hand was revealed as worthless, as every point won was shown to be a pointless charade, she would tell them how wonderful this other man was, and how if...
And his life was now, he felt, one monumental unreality, in which everything that did not matter - professional ambitions, the private pursuit of status, the colour of wallpaper, the size of an office...
All men were liars and he was no doubt no different—only one tongue and more tales than the dog pound.
Adversity brings out the best in us ... It's everyday living that does us in.