{A moment to hold close to the chest.}
I like the smell of candles recently blown out, be it atop a cake or in a votive small. I like the sounds my fish make as they eat the feed floating on the water’s surface. I like the notion of hanging onto a $5 note found forgotten in a pocket, storing it for a treat particular and unknown yet. And I like these, several lines I recently underlined with my fingernail as I read. I will store them away, marked for future reference for the scene painted or sound the sentences form when silently read.
This house, surrounded by bare trees and dark-green, almost black yew foliage, is evocative of the last rock of a submerged archipelago.(The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme, Andrei Makine)
The wind beat against the windows and roof. There was a whistling noise and the hobgoblin in the stove sang its song, plaintively, mournfully. It was past midnight. Everyone in the house had gone to bed, but no one slept and Nadya fancied she could hear someone playing the violin downstairs. Then there was a sharp bang — a shutter must have been torn off its hinges. A minute later Nina Ivanovna entered in her nightdresss, with a candle.
(The Bride from The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896–1904, Anton Chekhov)
It was white nights, the pale blue of midnight. No moon, no stars, just a few clouds still straggling along. My father had once written to me saying that the stars were deeper than their darkness, and I had stayed out for an hour pondering that line when a figure finally broke the shadow of the archway.
(Dancer, Colum McCann)
Enmeshed in smoke and the fumes of plum-brandy with paprika pods sizzling on the charcoal, they were hiccupping festive dactyls to each other and unsteadily clinking their tenth thimblefuls of palinka: vigorous, angular-faced, dark-clad and dark-glanced men with black moustaches tipped down at the corners if their mouths.
(A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor)
