“Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people - those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food;”
“Robin: When you do marry, who will you marry?
Maria: I have not quite decided yet, but I think I shall marry a boy I knew in London.
Robin(yells): What? Marry some mincing nincompoop of a Londoner with silk stockings and a pomade in his hair and face like a Cheshire cheese? You dare do such a thing! You - Maria - if you marry a London man I'll wring his neck! (...) I'll not only wring his neck, I'll wring everybody's necks, and I'll go right away out of the valley, over the hills to the town where my father came from, and I won't ever come back here again. So there!
(...)
Maria: Why don't you want me to marry that London boy?
Robin(shouting): Because you are going to marry me. Do you hear, Maria? You are going to marry me.”
“There is always something particularly delightful about exceptions to a rule.”
“Nothing is ever finished and done with in this world. You may think a seed was finished and done with when it falls like a dead thing into the earth; but when it puts forth leaves and flowers next spring you see your mistake.”
“In my opinion, too much attention to weather makes for instability of character.”
“...The simple little words came easily, fitting themselves to the tune that had come out of the harpsichord. It didn't seem to her that she made them up at all. It seemed to her that they flew in from the rose-garden, through the open window, like a lot of butterflies, poised themselves on the point of her pen, and fell off it on to the paper.”
“I have known him nearly all my life, and I am going to marry him, so that there won't ever be a time when I shan't know him.”
“Don't waste hate on pink geranium.”
“Cleanliness', chuckled Sir Benjamin, noting his great niece's delighted smile as her eyes rested upon him, 'comes next to godliness, eh, Maria?”
“Give me the benefit of your assistance during those ablutions that neccessarily, though unfortunatly, invariably follow the excercise of the culinary art.”
“She could only wait. But she was not idle while she waited, because she was holding herself in readiness for whatever it was that she would have to do. She was trying not to be frightened in her mind, and she found that that sort of waiting and thinking really keep a person quite busy.”
“Are you quite sure that you want to hear it?" he asked. "Sometimes, Maria, a story that one hears starts one off doing things that one would not have had to do if one had not heard it.”
“...pero no era sólo que rayara el alba, sino que el silencio también se había roto. A lejos, tenue y misterioso, se presentía el ruido del mar.”
“Por el este, donde estaba el mar y por donde habría de salir el sol, la luz se acercaba con sigilo tratando de internarse en el bosque como una neblina, y a medida que aumentaba la claridad lo hacía también el ruido del mar. De pronto, la luz pareció tomar forma. Dentro de ella había sombras que se movían, constituidas por otra luz aún más brillante. Eran cientos de caballos blancos al galope, con largas y sueltas crines y elegantes cuellos curvados como los de los caballos de ajedrez que había en la sala de estar. Sus cuerpos, que avanzaban a la velocidad de la luz, estaban hechos de una materia más etérea que del arco iris-”
“when an open sewage system had forced MPs out of the Houses of Parliament, with delicate handkerchiefs held up to their noses to escape the clash of the classes via their asses.”
“Moxie gave me a small smile. "Why do you always say that- which here means?"
"I'll probably outgrow it," I said.”
“We probably won’t arrive home in time for your wedding.”
She pictured the wedding gown hanging in her closet. The veil. The shoes. Even the strands of pearls, all laid out awaiting her return. Return. The heavy word weighed on her as Ira continued to snore and Oscar continued to study her in a way that made her feel captivating and beautiful.
Camille stood up, not sure if she’d been inching toward him. His lips had certainly seemed to be getting closer.
“Randall will understand, I’m sure. He’s a very reasonable person,” she said, her voice rapid.
Oscar started to stand. “Where are you going?”
“No, please, sit,” she said. “I…I just need to, um, use the trees.” Camille jiggled her nearly empty canteen to strengthen her excuse. She turned in a circle until she spotted a copse of trees. She had to be somewhere other than hidden in the flowers with Oscar, somewhere she could try and convince herself that Randall might one day be able to look at her with the same intensity Oscar had just displayed.
Oscar sat back down, and Camille trampled the grass on the way to the safety of the trees. Another attack of guilt snuck up on her as she glanced back at Oscar, who was watching her walk away. Camille would miss her own wedding-and she didn’t care one bit.”
“It wasn’t that she didn’t want to die. Nor was it that she wanted to live. She just didn’t want to give up.”
“El polizonte era capaz de anonadarlo, a fuerza de denuncias. Por ejemplo, vería a tu gato vagabundeando y te denunciaría por dejar tus animales errantes...;”
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