Your reader is at least as bright as you are

Satin and lace and brown velvet and the faint odor of violets. That was all which was left to him of his love.

His sadness was of the kind that is patient and without hope.

If you turn the imagination loose like a hunting dog, it will often return with the bird in its mouth.

Sometimes she goes out to work as a practical nurse, and comes home and sits by the kitchen table soaking her feet in a pan of hot water and Epsom salts. When she gets into bed and the springs creak under her weight, she groans with the pleasure of lying stretched out on an object that understands her so well.

It was lovely when you found students who responded to things you were enthusiastic about.

The view after seventy is breathtaking. What is lacking is someone, anyone, of the older generation to whom you can turn when you want to satisfy your curiosity about some detail of the landscape of the past. There is no longer any older generation. You have become it, while your mind was mostly on other matters