They were not willfully cruel, you know. Only foolish. Misguided by their learning, their ambition, their own self-deceiving blindness.
I did not see the wolf when he came. I did not hear him. There was only this: A little before dawn I became aware of a hush, and I realized that the only breathing to be heard in the room was my own.
Someone had told him once that the desire to do something well is a good indicator of talent.
Everybody has a story.
I felt a strange sensation inside. Like the past coming to life. The watery stirring of a previous life turning in my belly, creating a tide that rose in my veins and sent cool wavelets to lap at my temples. The ghastly excitement of it.
One of the first keys to success, he considered, was to recognize the difference between problems you could do something about and problems you could do nothing about.
Thomas Ambrose Proctor!
She was a woman who let life happen to her without troubling her mind about things more than was necessary.
They think I am concealing my ugliness from them, when in truth it is their ugliness I am hiding.
What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney?
The rhythm of the train on the tracks suggested words to his overtired brain and he heard them as clearly as if an unseen person had pronounced them: Something is going to happen.
He raised his head to work out whether the memory was genuine or whether it was some reverse echo by which the present seems to duplicate itself in the past.
As is well known, when the moon hours lenghten, human beings come adrift from the regularity of their mechanical clocks. They nod at noon, dream in waking hours, open their eyes wide to the pitch-black night. It is a time of magic. And as the borders between night and day stretch to their thinnest, so too do the borders between worlds.
For the first time in a lifetime by the river he noticed – really noticed – that under a moonless sky the river makes its own mercurial light. Light that is also darkness, darkness that is also light.
That is just a story, Jonathan.” Jonathan considered. “Like Jesus, then.” The parson frowned and was lost for words.
I had realized that while books are extraordinary, writers themselves are no more or less special than anyone else.
Rita knew better than most that doctors can be reluctant to admit it when they do not have the answer to a question. If no good answer presents itself, some will sooner give a bad answer than no answer at all. She did not tell Mrs. Vaughan this.
Therefore I conclude that the difficulty concerns integrity. People whose lives are not balanced by a healthy love of money suffer from an appalling obsession with personal integrity.
Rita did not look away. Part of her job was to help people face what was coming. Dying could be lonely. A nurse was often easier to talk to than family.
Let me spell it out for you. When a man’s got something he don’t give tuppence about and another man wants it enough, thruppence will usually do it.