There are objects made up of two sense elements, one visual, the other auditory—the colour of a sunrise and the distant call of a bird. Other objects are made up of many elements—the sun, the water against the swimmer's chest, the vague quivering...
They'd fallen into an easy routine, the three of them. Breakfast together in the morning, then Hughie would leave for work and she and Nell would get started in the house. Lil found she liked having a second shadow, enjoyed showing Nell things, expla...
- I had thought of the morning like an egg that had split with a crack and was spreading. Before us lay all the green of the green country of England, with its rivers and it's roads and it's hedges, it's churches, it's chimneys, it's rising threads o...
I'm in love with you," he said quietly. "Augustus," I said. "I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying t...
Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful c...
The blue sky, the brown soil beneath, the grass, the trees, the animals, the wind, and rain, and stars are never strange to me; for I am in and of and am one with them; and my flesh and the soil are one, and the heat in my blood and in the sunshine a...
A book a week I heave a sigh; That Slogan's peremptory cry I will not hear, I will not heed. How can They say that I should need The book They bid me weekly buy? But Slogans change, as days go by; My Psyche listens, fluttering shy, To newer message "...
Their daughter scrunched up her hands and legs, waving them wildly in the air. He opened his palm, allowing the babe to kick his hand. "Is she like a puppy?" Constance choked. "What!" He looked up. "Will she get her spots later?" Laughter bubbled up ...
Some curses fade and leave nothing but the faintest mark, a tea stain on watered silk. There are those that are so malevolent that, upon defeat, explode in a fiery burst of sulfurous flames, burning everything they touch as they die. Others dissolve ...
Writing is making love under a crescent moon: I see shadows of what’s to come, and it’s enough; I have faith in what I can’t see and it’s substantiated by a beginning, a climax, an ending. And if it’s an epic novel in hand, I watch the sunr...
I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there are no enclosures and where everything drew a free breath. I want to die there and not within walls. I know every stream...
Must you go? I was rather hoping you'd stay and be a ministering angel, but if you must go, you must." "I'll stay," Will said a bit crossly, and threw himself down in the armchair Tessa had just vacated. "I can minister angelically." "None too convin...
Jem gave her a wistful look. “Must you go? I was rather hoping that you’d stay and be a ministering angel, but if you must go, you must.” “I’ll stay,” Will said a bit crossly, and threw himself down in the armchair Tessa had just vacated....
i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday...
He grabbed me with both hands and began pushing me backward. I lost my balance. The ledge was at an angle, and it was covered with loose gravel. I was less than a foot from the edge. It was at that very moment that the clouds parted. The September su...
The simultaneity of near and far confused me; I thought it possible to find the past, the present and the future united in one place, giving it all that life can hold; but I had grave doubts that at any given moment life might reign both here and the...
I set my face toward the sun again, and I think about my old life—the one I feel as though I’ve abandoned somehow. It hurts to think of it that way. And even though I know it wasn’t perfect, I look back now, and all I see is perfection. Every s...
The days were brief and attenuated and the season appeared to be fixed - neither summer nor winter, spring nor fall. A thermal haze of inexpressible sweetness, though bearing tiny bits of grit or mica, had eased into the Valley from the industrial re...
The door of the bar opened, showing him a momentary oblong of true daylight, blankly white. A woman entered. He couldn't see her face as she crossed to the bar in front of the window, but he could see, drawn with exactitude by the light behind her, h...
In itself a wall on which a panoramic view of a non-existent world is drawn does not change. But for a great deal of money you can buy a view from the window with a painted sun, a sky-blue bay and a calm evening. Unfortunately the author of this frag...
The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. I raise my hand ; I take a book from the other side of the desk ; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond...
