Naomi Press

So let the door be closed leaving but a thin line of taut light underneath, let that lamp go out too in the neighbouring room where Sebastian has gone to bed; let the beautiful olivaceous house on the Nova embankment fade out gradually in the grey-blue frosty night, with gently falling snowflakes lingering in the moon-white blaze of the tall street lamp and powdering the mighty limbs of the two bearded corbel: figures which support with an Atlas-like effort the oriel of my father's room. My father is dead, Sebastian is asleep, or at least mouse-quiet, in the next room — and I am lying in bed, wide awake, staring into the darkness.

A thin veneer of immediate reality is spread over natural and artificial matter, and whoever wishes to remain in the now, with the now, on the now, should please not break its tension film

getting something for nothing,

“Playing croquet with you,” said Van, “should be rather like using flamingoes and hedgehogs.”

the same itinerary every time

The first twenty pages were adorned with a number of little plants

Fancy flower of paper, found in Aqua’s purse

out of spite and pity

After her death in 1883, Van computed that in the course of thirteen years,

Colonel Erminin, a widower, whose liver, he said in a note, was behaving like a pecheneg;