The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.

To have you here, you mean-in reach and yet out of reach? To meet you in this way, on the sly? It's the very reverse of what I want.

Everything about her was warm and soft and scented; even the stains of her grief became her as raindrops do the beaten rose.

She seemed to melt against him in her terror, and he caught her in his arms, held her fast there, felt her lashes beat his cheek like netted butterflies.

An education is like a crumbling building that needs constant upkeep with repairs and additions.

... naturalness is not always consonant with taste.

We live in our own souls as in an unmapped region, a few acres of which we have cleared for our habitation; while of the nature of those nearest us we know but the boundaries that march with ours.