Another time, talking about his books, the baroness confessed that she had never bothered to read any of them, because she hardly ever read 'difficult' or 'dark' novels like the ones he wrote. With the years, too, this habit had grown entrenched, and...
Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such and the...
In the back of the fridge I checked out some stewed apples destined to fester. I examined them closely and reckoned they had only a day to go, even by my standards. I spooned the apples into tiny bowls, tossed in some dried fruit and sprinkled them w...
Looks like he's lost a guinea and found a farthing," Horace said, then added, unnecessarily, "Will, I mean." Halt turned in his saddle to regard the younger man and raised an eyebrow. "I may be almost senile in your eyes, Horace, but there's no need ...
Comrades in the struggle! The position of modern man is not merely lamentable; one might even say that there is no condition, because man hardly exists. Nothing exists to which one could point and say: 'There, that is Homo Zapiens.' HZ is simply the ...
But this practice―a phenomenal rite―is hardly ever performed. To receive a copy of the key means to have its imprint seared into your hand. Holding that branded replica over the front lock miraculously parts the gates to Dreamland. It works just ...
Why did you marry Dad, Mom?" My mother sniffled through her nose, looked at me, then smiled. "I wanted something more and he was it. We both had big dreams." "That must have taken a lot of courage," I said. "To marry Dad. He was so different from you...
He could hardly imagine anymore what his life would be without the weight of his hidden knowledge. He'd come to think of it as a kind of penance. It was self-destructive, he could see that, but that was the way things were. People smoked, they jumped...
Think of it this way," he said. "Marriage would change hardly anything between us, except that we would end our arguments in a much more satisfying way. And of course I would have extensive legal rights over your body, your property, and all your ind...
In the midst of a culture that is rationally organized for a vocational workaday life, there is hardly any room for the cultivation of acosmic brotherliness, unless it is among strata who are economically carefree. Under the technical and social cond...
You're going to throw me naked into a pit and make me drench myself in baby lotion, aren't you?" Bride You live in New Orleans, where they can't even dig a grave. So tell me where I'm going to find this pit?" Vane "It's an above ground pit." Bride "H...
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.�...
In general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence, from which they hardly ever deviate even in a slight degree without losing g...
And maybe, although it was a thing you could hardly bear to think about, like death or your last judgment, maybe he would be the last one ever and he would walk away now and it would only be a question of waiting for it all to end and hoping for bett...
She knew better than to waste that time. There isn't always someone who wants you singing to him or nibbling his ear or brushing his cheek with a dandelion blossom. Somebody who knows when you're being silly, and laughs and laughs. So long as he was ...
We mustn't be afraid of inventing anything...Everething there is in us exists in nature. After all, we're part of nature. If it resembles nature, that's fine. If it doesn't, what of it? When man wanted to invent something as useful as the human foot,...
I've always said women make the best agents. Deceit comes naturally to them. It's hardly surprising: If you were born with a little hole half the population could stick its dick into whenever if felt like it you'd learn deceit too. Biology is destiny...
Old age. All the facial detail is visible; all the traces life has left there are to be seen. The face is furrowed, wrinkled, sagging, ravaged by time. But the eyes are bright and, if not young, then somehow transcend the time that otherwise marks th...
The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of passing or having passed, or hoping to pass, through certain intense human emotions. It was a phenomenon of orientation rather than of art, thus ...
I've said that he and I had been crazy for each other. But maybe my ex and I were not crazy for each other. Maybe we were sane for each other, as if our desire was almost not even personal - it was personal, but that hardly mattered, since there seem...
A gentleman can hardly continue to sit,' he explained, in his serenest and most level voice, 'when he asks a very remarkable young lady to do him the honor of marrying him. And - 'he somehow contrived to grin at me wickedly, 'I usually get what I wan...
