The Black Moon

God, thought Ross, it does work, and unfairly; but I want her, not any other, not the most beautiful eighteen-year-old damsel born out of a sea-shell, not the most seductive houri of any sultan's harem; I want her with her familiar gestures and her shining smile and her scarred knees, and I know she wants me in just the same way, and if there's any happiness more complete than this I don't know it and am not sure I even want it.

Blemishes on the beauty of a person one loves are like grace notes adding something to a piece of music.

You see, Ross, in every right marriage, in every good marriage a woman has to be three things, don't she? She's got to be a wife and look after a man's comforts in the way a man should be looked after. Then she's got to bear his children and get all swelled up like a summer pumpkin and then often-times feed them after and smell of babies and have them crawling all about her...But then, third, she has also to try and be his mistress at the same time; someone he is still interested in; someone he wants, not just the person who happens to be there and convenient; someone a bit mysterious...someone whose knee or -- or shoulder he wouldn't instantly recognize if he saw it beside him in bed. It's -- it's impossible.

Music, she thought, perhaps could be a continuing process, like life, a shedding of one skin as fast as another grew. Instead every tune seemed to exist with its notes firmly rooted in an event or an emotion or a period of time.

The French have a saying – is it the French? I don’t know, I believe so – there is a saying that you do not put a boiling kettle upon the fire. You put cold water in the kettle and allow it to warm. So with marriage.

we can’t alter the world, we can only adapt ourselves to it.

On the Monday morning, with the rain still pouring down, Ross went in to see Drake, who was sitting up in bed and, apart from the bandaged shoulder and the plastered fingers, was now looking more substantial than Dwight. Perhaps this too was not surprising. At nineteen, if a man does not die from a wound, he quickly gets better. ‘So,’ said Ross. ‘I thought I might have had to take your sister home some bad news.’ Drake smiled. All the damned family, Ross thought, had this wonderful smile. They had certainly not inherited it from their father. ‘No, sur. I

If we lived for ever, who would look forward eagerly to tomorrow? If there were no darkness, should we so appreciate the sun? Warmth after cold, food after hunger, drink after thirst, sexual love after the absence of sexual love, the fatherly greeting after being away, the comfort and dryness of home after a ride in the rain, the warmth and peace and security of one’s fireside after being among enemies. Unless there were contrast there might be satiety. He

To hear the young talk today you would think no one had had any excitement in the past, any heartaches, any problems, any bitter frustrations or heady fulfilment. The young of today were more than a shade tedious; pompous, self-centred, so sure that their concerns were the first important ones that had ever happened. They had no perspective. no sense of proportion. Perhaps it was necessary to be old to acquire a true sense of proportion. It was small consolation but it was something. On

I think, sir,’ said Demelza, ‘that your apricot tart is about to be laced viz cream and rum, and you would do well to discover wezzer you can attempt zat.

With age one never looked far ahead. The marathon horizons of youth narrowed and shortened into hurdles of age.

It is a mistake to restrict oneself in one’s pleasures,’ Ross said. ‘One should never risk being thought a Puritan.

Perhaps it is like a fever that blows in the air, like cholera, like the plague; it blows in the air and settles on men – or a town – or a nation – and everyone in it, or nearly everyone, falls a victim.’ He

These days I often have a struggle not to feel inferior to you, that is in your judgment of human beings.’ ‘I don’t think I have any judgment, at least not to be proud of. But perhaps I am nearer the earth than you. Like Garrick, I can smell a friend.

...I mistrust folk who are always bringing God or Christ into their conversations. If it is not an actual blasphemy it is at least a presumption. It smacks of self-conceit, doesn't it?

In order to destroy this system which we so much detest we are creating conditions over here which run contrary to our dearest p-principles.

Yet, although he could not quite work this out in simple terms in his own mind, the very savour of life, he thought, was itself enhanced if it were not totally taken for granted. Perhaps it was something to do with the whole philosophy of the world into which we were born. If we lived for ever, who would look forward eagerly to tomorrow? If there were no darkness, should we appreciate the sun? Warmth after cold, food after hunger, drink after thirst, sexual love after the absence of sexual love, the fatherly greeting after being away, the comfort and dryness of home after a ride in the rain, the warmth and peace and security of one’s fireside after being among enemies. Unless there was contrast there might be satiety.