Dorothy scratched her dark head, yawning wide, and white feathers floated out of her hair.

Bees blew like cake-crumbs through the golden air, white butterflies like sugared wafers, and when it wasn’t raining a diamond dust took over which veiled and yet magnified all things

Me dad planted that tree,’ she said absently, pointing out through the old cracked window.The great beech filled at least half the sky and shook shadows all over the house.Its roots clutched the slope like...

God’s codpiece, you’re very kind

Granny Trill and Granny Wallon were traditional ancients of a kind we won’t see today, the last of that dignity of grandmothers to whom age was its own embellishment. The grandmothers of those days dressed...

The prospect Smiler was a manic farmer. Few men I think can have been as unfortunate as he; for on the one hand he was a melancholic with a loathing for mankind, on the other,...

All civilizations at some time have fallen into this total terror, when the mystery of life was a kind of panic only to be assuaged by the spilling of blood.

At best, love is simply the slipping of a hand in another’s, of knowing you are where you belong at last, and of exchanging through the eyes that all-consuming regard which ignores everybody else on...

She was too honest, too natural for this frightened man; too remote from his tidy laws. She was, after all, a country girl; disordered, hysterical, loving. She was muddled and mischievous as a chimney-jackdaw, she...

It came out sparkling like liquid sky.

She leaned out of the window slow and sleepy, and the light came through her nightdress like sand through a sieve.