She was a thin, a thin burning flame, colorless yet fresh. Her smile came first slowly, shy and bold, as if all the life of that little body had gathered for a moment around her mouth and the rest of her was a wisp that the least wind would blow away. She was a changeling whose lips were the only point of contact with reality.
It was necessary for him to have hope. So he built hope, desperately and tenaciously out of the stuff of his dream, a hope flimsy enough, to be sure, a hope that was cracked and dissipated a dozen times a day, a hope mothered by mockery, but, nevertheless, a hope that would be brawn and sinew to his self-respect.
Similarly we are seldom sorry for those who need and crave our pity – we reserve this for those who, by other means, make us exercise the.
Here, finally, was the quintessence of self-expression – yet it was probably that for the most part their love expressed Gloria rather than Anthony. He felt often like a scarcely tolerated guest at a party she was giving.
Gloria had been sorry for him but she had judged it best not to show it. In a final burst of kindness she had tried to make him hate her, there at the last.
On the contrary. When a man speaks he’s merely tradition. He has at best a few thousand years back of him. But woman, why, she is the miraculous mouthpiece of posterity.
Technically excellent, perhaps, but not convincing.
It’s your turn to be the centre, to give others what was given to you for so long. You’ve got to give security to young people and peace to your husband, and a sort of charity to the old. You’ve got to let the people who work for you depend on you. You’ve got to cover up a few more troubles than you show, and be a little more patient than the average person, and do a little more instead of a little less than your share. The light and glitter of the world is in your hands.
No,” Amory objected. “I’ve lost half my personality in a year.” “Not a bit of it!” scoffed Monsignor. “You’ve lost a great amount of vanity and that’s all.
Sometimes she speaks of ‘the past’ as people speak who have been in prison. But you never know whether they refer to the crime or the imprisonment or the whole experience.
He was tempted to lean over and kiss away her tears.
Now there was this scarcely saved waif of disaster bringing him the essence of a continent...
And you say you’re a weak character, that you’ve no will.” “Not a bit of will – I’m a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires – ” “You are not!” She brought one little fist down onto the other. “You’re a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in the world, your imagination.
I want to marry Anthony, because husbands are so often ‘husbands’ and I must marry a lover.
He was enough older than Nicole to take pleasure in her youthful vanities and delights, the way she paused fractionally in front of the hall mirror on leaving the restaurant, so that the incorruptible quicksilver could give her back to herself.
She had magic in her pink palms and her cheeks lit to a lovely flame, like the thrilling flush of children after their cold baths in the evening.
There are people who say that intelligence must have built the universe – why, intelligence never built a steam engine! Circumstances built a steam engine. Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure the infinite achievements of Circumstances.
Wilson and his cabinet – a cabinet that in its lack of distinction was strangely reminiscent of the twelve apostles.
All the city was playing with this sound out there in the blue summer dark, throwing it up and calling it back, promising that, in a little while, life would be beautiful as a story, promising happiness – and by that promise giving it. It gave love hope in its own survival. It could do no more.
But for a girl I think she ought to have lots of minor accomplishments and pass them on to her children.