The very shapes of the trees were like frozen screams.

She was a thin, sickly, bony child, like an eft, with fine hair like sunlit smoke.

…although her mouth uttered fond words, her eyes spoke only venom.

No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed to almost vanish when seen edge on. There was...

Wings of a half finished book across his chest.

Anxiously he explored every one of these vaguely seen shapes, as though among the phantoms of the dead, in the realms of darkness, he had been searching for a lost Eurydice.

Una rosa se despertó en su sangre y ensombreció sus mejillas. Un agitado aliento separó los pétalos de sus labios, que temblaron. Sobre ella sopló algún viento sur de pasión y movió los delicados pliegos...

A writer need not be bound by flat statement like “It was a rough sea,” when verbs like tumble and roil and seethe wait to spell from her pen.

The sun was deaf’nin’ so high up, yay, it roared an’ time streamed from it.

The psychobabble began.Reluctantly, Harry felt her vibes, embraced her empathy, and was seduced and violated by her verbal rhythm. Her sweet, whispering, soothing voice enslaved him with a melodic and rhythmic hypnotic dance, attaching her...

Anatomy is to physiology as geography is to history; it describes the theatre of events.

But she was wrong; it was what gave her away; she had not taken into account that this fragmentary detail of the truth had sharp edges which could not be made to fit in, except...

… I felt that I was not penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that something more lay behind that mobility, that luminosity, something which they seemed at once to contain and to conceal.

Some boys walk by and you cry, seeing them. They feel good, they look good, they are good. Oh, they’re not above peeing off a bridge, or stealing an occasional dime-store pencil sharpener; it’s not...

A strong wind sang sadly as it bent the trees in front of the Hall. A half moon shone through the dark, flying clouds on to the wild and empty moor.

I became simply a pair of eyes, staring through my mask at Char. I needed no ears because I was too far off to hear his voice, no words because I was too distant for...

All the ideas in the universe can be described by words. Therefore, if you simply take all the words and rearrange them randomly enough times, you’re bound to hit upon at least a few great...

I have sincerely tried not to deride the action of men, not to lament nor to abhor them. I have done all in my might to understand them.- Spinoza

A ‘real’ person, profoundly as we may sympathise with him, is in a great measure perceptible only through our senses, that is to say, he remains opaque, offers a dead weight which our sensibilities have...

The moon hung over the planet Earth, a dead thing over a dying thing.

Since its sudden birth the city had expanded, swallowing up acre upon acre of the surrounding grasslands and drawing thousands into its domain. Hardly built on the most advantageous ground, miles from the open waters,...

Rew looked like he had put his face up to the sky in a rainstorm of freckles

String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string.

The pale sword came shivering through the air

In describing a protein it is now common to distinguish the primary, secondary and tertiary structures. The primary structure is simply the order, or sequence, of the amino-acid residues along the polypeptide chains. This was...

But the lies which Odette ordinarily told were less innocent, and served to prevent discoveries which might have involved her in the most terrible difficulties with one or another of her friends. And so, when...

The chronicle of a man, the account of his life, his historiography, written as he lived out his life formed part of the rituals of his power. The disciplinary methods reversed this relation, lowered the...

It was still early, and the sun’s lower limb was just free of the hill, his rays, ungenial and peering, addressed the eye rather than the touch as yet.

And the needles of the pine trees, freshly washed to a deep, rich green, shimmered with droplets that blinked like clear crystals.

However gross a man may be, the minute he expresses a strong and genuine affection, some inner secretion alters his features, animates his gestures, and colors his voice. The stupidest man will often, under the...

His head always felt about to ache, but never began to.

… there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his grasp again.

Blue was a fanciful, but sensible thing. Like a platypus, or one of those sandwiches that had been cut into circles for a fancy tea party.

Admirable, however, as the Paris of the present day appears to you, build up and put together again in imagination the Paris of the fifteenth century; look at the light through that surprising host of...

Venecijanske zgrade su nosile pečate od kamena, kao što pisma nose pečate od voska. U njima su bile izvajane figure. Na jednoj, orao je sedeo na magarcu i kljuvao ga. Na drugoj, grifon je jeo...

The unseen essential can be described in many ways and comes in many forms, but is always preceded by virtue.

I have seen many a face that was more good-looking — never one that looked half so good.

…the nest is agiggle with excitement.

The king who stepped into the ballroom wearing a green velvet robe and bejeweled crown was none other that the tiger-man who’d prowled through my nightmares and nearly every waking moment for the past two...

He went farther; agonised by the reflection, at the moment when it passed by him, so near and yet so infinitely remote, that, while it was addressed to their ears, it knew them not, he...

She is oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus.

Rap in its form is poetry, meaning the point of convergence is words.

Outside, I could smell the Zebra. Even if for some reason I stopped feeling cold or hot or rain or sun, I bet I could close my eyes and still tell which season I was...

These hands are steady enough, but they are large. Had he been a proper pianist – he’s dabbled inexpertly – his ten-note span might be of use.

When describing myself, I don’t use superlatives. Just normal latives. And if I use the same word more than once to describe myself, it’s a relative. This is how I became my own father. And...

It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.

My body, still too heavy with sleep to move…

It slowly began to dawn on me that I had been staring at her for an impossible amount of time. Lost in my thoughts, lost in the sight of her. But her face didn’t look...

The sun shined and winked through wind-rustled leaves to paint the roadway with an ever-shifting mosaic of light and shadows.

In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that...