When a country is defeated, there remain only mountains and rivers, and on a ruined castle in spring only grasses thrive. I sat down on my hat and wept bitterly till I almost forgot time. A thicket of summer grass Is all that remains Of the dreams an...
Nonsense. Hardly touched a drop. That much.” She held out two fingers to show how tiny an amount “that much” was. “Just went to a party,” said Richard, “and saw Jessica and saw a real angel and got a little black pig and came back here.�...
NOOOO!" On the screen, a woman's eyes bugged almost out of her head, and I tried not to scream. Tried not to scream in exasperation, I mean. The serial killer was right in front of her, wide open! Clearly, instead of weeping like a moron, she could b...
You can't figure out why I'm mad? How about because I had my tongue between your legs two days ago, or the fact we both almost overdosed on orgasms, or maybe it's because I got a fucking hard on the minute you walked in that conference room door? Tak...
You love me,” he said. “That’s all I need to know.” “You always say the right thing,” Savannah told him, her eyes so filled with love that he almost wept. “Sometimes it takes you awhile to get to it, but you always get there, and what y...
{ } ... I remain an utter disbeliever in almost all that you consider the most sacred truths... But whether there be a God and whatever be His nature; whether we have an immortal soul or not, or whatever may be our state after death, I can have no fe...
I don't suppose I can wear the flamingo tie," he said as he pulled on black socks. "It's a bit festive, given the occasion," I responded. "Can't wear it to the opera," said the Colonel, almost smiling. "Can't wear it to a funeral. Can't use it to han...
... to undertake a gargantuan task: calculate the value of all the services provided by all the ecosystems, from the forest to the floodplains to the open ocean, across the world... they came up with a number- $33 trillion a year- a headline-grabbing...
There are official searchers, inquisitors. I have seen them in the performance of their function: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they speak of a broken stairway which almost killed them; they talk with the librarian of galler...
In relation to the natural world, the pleasure of Americans can be destructive in the same way that their work has already proved to be. It is not, certainly, a conscious destructiveness. But in that very unconsciousness it becomes an aspect of one o...
There were certain moments upon which the whole of the future course of one's life might turn. And almost inevitably they popped out at one without any warning at all, leaving one with no time to consider or engage in a reasoned debate with oneself. ...
Whenever I think about ancient cultures nostalgia seizes me. Perhaps this is nothing but envy of the sweet slowness of the history of that time. The era of ancient Egyptian culture lasted for several thousand years; the era of Greek antiquity for alm...
All this ferment was public, we might almost say tranquil. The imminent insurrection gathered its storm calmly in the face of the government. No singularity was lacking in this crisis, still subterranean, but already perceptible. The middle class tal...
Perhaps it was the darkness and secrecy that lent an extra layer of excitement to their meeting? Certainly, all of her other senses felt heightened to an almost unbearable extent. She couldn’t see, but she could hear the distant strains of dance mu...
The throne rumbled. A wave of gale-force anger slammed into me. The voice stopped abruptly, The anger retreated, which was a good thing, because just those two words had almost blasted my mind to shreds. My fathers voice was still angry but more cont...
Like almost all girls I don't know the date of my birth: my parents did not trouble to record the day and the time. I only know the year and the season, and I only know the season because my mother had a great desire for asparagus when she was carryi...
Somewhere, the imaginary little shoulder angel and devil were having a conversation on their respective sides, the angel offering a gentle warning that this might not be a good idea, given all the drama, the complications. But the little devil, with ...
The Duke has decreed that the Castle is not cold." The gentleman's lips are almost blue from this lack of cold. "And the Duke is right and correct in this as in all things." ...some very beautiful tapestries line the walls, but many of them are also ...
[Y]ou can't control everything. Anything, really. Like the food we've been making. We can follow the recipe exactly as your grandmother wrote it, do everything exactly--or almost exactly--as she had, and the dish can come out so-so instead of amazing...
He was looking at her with that intense blazing gaze – the one that made her feel she was the only woman in the world. Oh God, don’t let him get to her. She’d tried to raise her defences against him, but he was so very attractive – almost irr...
It was wonderful to see the sparkle back in her eyes. He wanted to keep it there. For the first time in years he’d found himself actually caring about how someone else felt. He’d been spending so much time being a tough successful businessman tha...
