"We kept walking all over Tokyo in the same meandering way, climbing hills, crossing rivers and railway lines, just walking and walking with no destination in mind. We forged straight ahead, as if our walking were a religious ritual meant to heal our wounded spirits." 1987.
"But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way." - 1818.
"Theoretically she would tell herself that she would give all, trust, confidence, love, friendship, and ask for nothing in return. Practically she suffered tortures of jealousy if the loved one adressed a word or a smile to any but herself, and cried herself to sleep night after night in the certainty of loving infinitely more than she was loved." - 1919, Percephone book no. 13.
"Arvid syntes han kunne mærke snerten i ordene før han havde åbnet munden, men så ombestemte bedstefar sig og blinkede som om de havde en hemmelighed sammen. Arvid åndede lettet op selv om han ikke forstod hvad hemmeligheden gik ud på."
"Women ought to be free - as free as we are," he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences." - 1920.
"He forgot that love, which is madness, and a scourge, and a fever, and a delusion, and a snare, is also a mystery, and very imperfectly understood by every one except the individual sufferer who writhes under its tortures." - 1861-62
"Outside the wind was loud and there was a faint flow of thunder along the Sound. All the lights were going on in West Egg now; the electric trains, men-carrying, were plunging home through the rain from New York. It was the hour of a profound human change, and excitement was generating on the air.
"Sharp October winds were sweeping the leaves from the limes in the long avenue, and driving them in withered heaps with a ghostly rustling noise along the dry gravel walks. The old well must have been half choked up with the leaves that drifted about it, and whirled in eddying circles into it's black, broken mouth."
"As they rose, one by one, to go to dinner, a party of middle-aged people there for a mild celebration, all instinctively sat up and straightened their backs. They tried to look more alert, and to forget their future."
"As the golden summer changed into the deeper golden autumn he went to the Lake of Como. There he found the loveliness of a dream."
"The robin flew from his swinging spray of ivy on to the top of the wall and he opened his beak and sang a loud, lovely trill, merely to show off. Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off - and they are nearly always doing it."
"He could not rage against that look; he had no scorn for it. It lighted a country between them which words could not have undarkened."
"Your vows to her and me, put in two scales, / Will even weigh; and both as light as tales."
"December 24. - Take entire family to children's party at neighbouring Rectory. Robin says Damn three times in the Rector's hearing, an expression never used by him before or since, but apparently reserved for this unsuitable occasion."
"Having finished her usual devotions, Antonia retired to bed. Sleep soon stole over her senses; and for several hours she enjoyed that calm repose which innocence alone can know, and for which many a monarch with pleasure would exchange his crown."
"He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn't speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen."
"'Do you always have the devil's own luck, Frenchman?' she said. 'Always,' he answered."
"'If he be Mr Hyde,' he had thought, 'I shall be Mr Seek.'"
"We were, superficially at any rate, a very unlikely pair to become friendly. She was fair-haired and pretty, gaily dressed in cordurory trousers and a bright jersey, while I, mousy and rather plain anyway, drew attention to these qualities with my shapeless overall and old fawn skirt."
"Thereafter, on dear, tempestuous February nights, the wind - breathing into my heart, which it shook no less violently than the chimney of my bedroom, the project of a visit to Balbec - blended in me the desire for gothic architecture with that for a storm upon the sea."
"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
"A metallic whistling pealed suddenly out of the mouth of the gramophone. It continued, and presently took shape and became a trifling little tune. Tigers seemed to be growling sulkily within the machine also, and it seemed that something like a hyena was faintly laughing too."
"Who was the blundering idiot who said that 'fine words butter no parsnips'? Half the parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no other sauce."
"She was to be content to weave a steady life with him, all one fabric, but perhaps brocaded with the occasional flower of adventure."
"- And you, ye well-known trees! - but you will continue the same. - No leaf will decay because we are removed, nor any branch become motionless although we can observe you no longer!"
"Now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage."
"Suffering has been stronger than all other teachings, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape."
"Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!"
"Yet she still felt something obdurate in herself, even in her state of frailty and defeat. It was hard, physical pain in her breast, which might have been indigestion, but was vanity."
