For at eight o’clock the world came to an end. It was reading time. The hours between eight in the evening and one or two in the morning have always been my magic hours.
One of the best ways of avoiding his torments was to be ignorant about something and let him put you straight.
Does the occurrence of one impossible thing increase the likelihood of a second.
A letter. For me. That was something of an event. The crisp-cornered envelope, puffed up with its thickly folded contents, was addressed in a hand that must have given the postman a certain amount of trouble.
All evidence of the house ghost reasserting herself.
By the time the words from the bank reached her, the thick white river mist had rinsed the urgency out of them. The words drifted into her ear, washed out and waterlogged, and sounded scarcely louder than the thoughts in her own head.
It doesn’t do to get attached to these secondary characters. It’s not their story. They come and go, and when they go, they’re gone for good.
The Thames that goes north, south, east, and west, to finally go east, that seeps to one side and the other as it moves forward, that goes slow as it goes fast, that evaporates into the sky whilst meandering to the sea, is more about motion than about beginnings. If it has a beginning, it is located in a dark inaccessible place. Better study where it goes than where it comes from.
I see,” she said softly, nodding her head as though she really did. “Well, it’s your business, of course.” She turned her hand in her lap and stared into her damaged palm. “You are at liberty to say nothing, if that is what you want. But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grow pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.” Her eyes swiveled back to me. “Believe me, Margaret. I know.
Avete presente quando cominciate a leggere un nuovo libro prima che la membrana di quello precedente abbia avuto il tempo di richiudersi dietro di voi? Quando lasciate il vecchio libro avete idee, argomenti – perfino personaggi – impigliati nelle fibre dei vestiti e, aprendo quello nuovo, scoprite che sono ancora con voi.
The river is of no use to a yorkshire cat, it is the moors he is looking for.
Any governess, after the few hours I have had in this house, would have a full and clear picture of the task awaiting her, but he is a man, hence cannot see how tiresome it is to have explained at length what one has already fully understood.
Never let time be your master,′ Bellman told Verney when he asked about it. ‘If you want to do something, take it on. Time will always make itself.
The end of my nine o’clocks was another anchor in time gone.
Half a year – maybe.” “Something like that.” Rita did not look away. Part of her job was to help people look at what was coming. Dying could be lonely. A nurse was often an easier person to talk to than family. She held his gaze with hers.
Shirley goes over the edge.” “I don’t like games like this.” “Now George Sand starts to go up in flames.” I sighed and closed my eyes. “Wuthering Heights.
So much science has at its root the ability to see afresh what has been seen and thought to be understood for centuries.
Remember, this person burns books. Does he really deserve to live?
And my own feelings? Shame. For I had lied. Of course I loved books more than people. Of course I valued Jane Eyre over the anonymous stranger with his hand on the lever. Of course all of Shakespeare was worth more than a human life. Of course. Unlike Miss Winter, I had been ashamed to say so.
Quite by chance, her talk of ghosts comes on the very day the book I am in the middle of reading has completely disappeared, only to be replaced by a novella by Henry James.