Sanctuary

It's not four days ago I find a bastard squatting here, asking me if I read books. Like he would jump me with a book or something. Take me for a ride with the telephone directory.

You’re not being tried by common sense,” Horace said. “You’re being tried by a jury.

I be dog if hit don't look like sometimes that when a fellow sets out to play a joke, hit ain't another fellow he's playing that joke on; hit's a kind of big power laying still somewhere in the dark that he sets out to prank with without knowing hit, and hit all depends on whether that ere power is in the notion to take a joke or not, whether or not hit blows up right in his face, like this one did in mine. ("A Bear Hunt")

God is foolish at times, but at least He’s a gentleman. Dont you know that?” “I always thought of Him as a man,” the woman said.

She wasn’t born for this kind of life. You have to be born for this like you have to be born a butcher or a barber, I guess. Wouldn’t anybody be either of them just for money or fun.

She thought of them, woolly, shapeless; savage, petulant, spoiled, the flatulent monotony of their sheltered lives snatched up without warning by an incomprehensible moment of terror and fear of bodily annihilation at the very hands which symbolised by ordinary the licensed tranquillity of their lives.

I have but one rift in the darkness, that is that I have injured no one save myself by my folly, and that the extent of that folly you will never learn.

The orchestra had ceased and were now climbing onto their chairs, with their instruments. The floral offerings flew; the coffin teetered. "Catch it!" a voice shouted. They sprang forward, but the coffin crashed heavily to the floor, coming open. The corpse tumbled slowly and sedately out and came to rest with its face in the center of a wreath. "Play something!" the proprietor bawled, waving his arms; "play! Play!

Usava uma camisola larga demais, de crepe cor-de-cereja, que surgia negra contra o lençol. Os cabelos soltos, agora penteados, pareciam negros. O rosto, pescoço e braços, sobre as cobertas, eram cinzentos. Depois que os outros saíram ela ficou durante algum tempo com a cabeça escondida sob o lençol. Assim continuou até ouvir fechar-se a porta, até se apagar o som dos passos que desciam a escada, da voz do médico que se exprimia com volubilidade, da respiração ofegante de Miss Reba. Sons que adquiriram, no sombrio saguão, a cor do luar, e desapareceram. Depois Temple pulou da cama e foi até a porta, fazendo correr o trinco. Voltou ao leito e cobriu-se, inclusive a cabeça, ali ficando encolhida até faltar-lhe o ar. Derradeiros reflexos cor-de-açafrão tingiam o teto e a parte das paredes onde viam-se as sombras de paliçada da avenida, que a oeste se erguia contra o céu. Ela viu-os desaparecer, consumidos pelos sucessivos bocejos da cortina. Viu também a última luz condensar-se na parte fronteira do relógio e o mostrador passar, no escuro, de orifício redondo a disco suspenso no nada, no primitivo caos, e mudar depois para bola de cristal que continha, na sua tranquila e misteriosa profundidade, o caos ordenado do mundo complicado e sombrio sobre cujos flancos, marcados de cicatrizes, as velhas feridas rolam vertiginosamente para a frente, mergulhando na escuridão onde se escondem novos desastres.

I am too old for this. I was born too old for it, and so I am sick to death for quiet.

From time to time he would feel that acute surge go over him, like his blood was too hot all of a sudden, dying away into that warm unhappy feeling that fiddle music gave him.

It does last," Horace said. "Spring does. You'd almost think there was some purpose to it.