The dowager rose and slipped from her pew. There was the sound of tearing silk as she threw up her arms to embrace her son. Then: "Oh, Rupert, darling," she exclaimed in tones of theatrical despair, "don't you see? The game's up!

Slowly, Anna put up a hand to his muzzle and began to scratch that spot behind the ear where large dogs keep their souls.

Herr Altenburg, I can't; I have vertigo.' And Marek looked at him: 'All right - I'll get the chemist to fix me something.

Shadows are cool and peaceful places for those whose minds are overstocked with treasure.

Pauline kept a scrapbook into which she pasted important articles that she had cut out of the newspapers. These were about the courageous deeds that had been done by people even if they only had one leg or couldn't see or had been dropped on their heads when they were babies. 'It's to make me brave,' she'd explained to Annika.

This is worse than Hollywood, he thought. A girl comes in with a pork chop and I write a song for her.

She's like snow in Russian," said Anna. "Snow in the evening when the sun sets and it looks like Alpengluhen, you know? And if snow had a scent it would smell like that [the rose].