Angular Quotes

How did you-" Fool your guards? They're not very good, the forgot to check the ceiling for spiders."Valek grinned. His angular face softened.

I read once about a kind of fungus that grows in trees. The fungus begins to encroach on the systems that carry water and nutrients up from the roots to the branches. It disables them one by one―it crowds them out. Soon, the fungus―and only the fungus―is carrying the water, and the chemicals, and everything else the tree needs to survive. At the same time it is decaying the tree slowly from within, turning it minute by minute to rot. That is what hatred is. It will feed you and at the same time turn you to rot. It is hard and deep and angular, a system of blockades. It is everything and total.

How did you—” “Fool your guards? They’re not very good. They forgot to check the ceiling for spiders.” Valek grinned. His angular face softened. Startled, I realized he wasn’t in disguise. “This is dangerous.” “I knew falling for you was dangerous, love.

I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew who she was. No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships—gone. She went on living, but with a tabula rasa as her diary and calendar and notebook. I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again': Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction. You wish to have one more reflection on what it is to have been made the object of a 'clean' sweep? Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic miniature story 'Signs and Symbols,' which is about angst and misery in general but also succeeds in placing it in what might be termed a starkly individual perspective. The album of the distraught family contains a faded study of Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.

She moved from being a young woman into having the angular look of a queen, someone who has made her face with her desire to be a certain kind of person. He still likes that about her. Her smartness, the fact that she did not inherit that look or that beauty, but it was something searched for and that it will always reflect a present stage of her character.

You are so obtuse!" Brontë says, exasperated. I am calm in my response. "Do you mean stupid, or angular? You need to be more specific with your insults.

This is what hatred is. It will feed you and at the same time turn you to rot.  It is hard and deep and angular, a system of blockades. It is everything and total.  Hatred is a high tower. In the Wilds, I start to build, and to climb. 

The house seemed so different at night. Everything was in its correct place, of course, but somehow the furniture seemed more angular and the pictures on the wall more one-dimensional. She remembered somebody saying that at night we are all strangers, even to ourselves, and this struck her as being true.

Adam Carlsen was handsome. Adam Carlsen, with his long nose and wavy hair, with his full lips and angular face that shouldn’t have fit together but somehow did, was really, really, really handsome.

I don’t realize it until I speak it. And it’s different from the times I’ve said it before, or the way I’ve hoped it, as if dreaming something enough could birth it into being. I know it now with a certainty that has fitted into the lost core at the heart of me, as hard and angular as my hope was soft and shimmering. The King will not have me.

Her life is architected, elegant and angular, a beauty to behold, and mine is a stew, a juicy, sloppy mess of ingredients and feelings and emotions, too much salt and spice, too much anxiety, always a little dribbling down the front of my shirt. But have you tasted it? Have you tasted it. It’s delicious.

Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars. Then the breeze died too and there was no noise save the drip and tickle of water that ran out of clefts and spilled down, leaf by leaf, to the brown earth of the island. The air was cool, moist, and clear; and presently even the sound of the water was still. The beast lay huddled on the pale beach and the stains spread, inch by inch. The edge of the lagoon became a streak of phosphorescence which advanced minutely, as the great wave of the tide flowed. The clear water mirrored the clear sky and the angular bright constellations. The line of phosphorescence bulged about the sand grains and little pebbles; it held them each in a dimple of tension, then suddenly accepted them with an inaudible syllable and moved on. Along the shoreward edge of the shallows the advancing clearness was full of strange, moonbeam-bodied creatures with fiery eyes. Here and there a larger pebble clung to its own air and was covered with a coat of pearls. The tide swelled in over the rain-pitted sand and smoothed everything with a layer of silver. Now it touched the first of the stains that seeped from the broken body and the creatures made a moving patch of light as they gathered at the edge. The water rose further and dressed Simon's coarse hair with brightness. The line of his cheek silvered and the turn of his shoulder became sculptured marble. The strange, attendant creatures, with their fiery eyes and trailing vapours busied themselves round his head. The body lifted a fraction of an inch from the sand and a bubble of air escaped from the mouth with a wet plop. Then it turned gently in the water. Somewhere over the darkened curve of the world the sun and moon were pulling; and the film of water on the earth planet was held, bulging slightly on one side while the solid core turned. The great wave of the tide moved further along the island and the water lifted. Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon's dead body moved out towards the open sea.

What a difference! Under the esthetic sky, everything is buoyant, beautiful, transient! when ethics arrives on the scene, everything becomes harsh, angular and infinitely boring

Elephant, beyond the fact that their size and conformation are aesthetically more suited to the treading of this earth than our angular informity, have an average intelligence comparable to our own. Of course they are less agile and physically less adaptable than ourselves -- nature having developed their bodies in one direction and their brains in another, while human beings, on the other hand, drew from Mr. Darwin's lottery of evolution both the winning ticket and the stub to match it. This, I suppose, is why we are so wonderful and can make movies and electric razors and wireless sets -- and guns with which to shoot the elephant, the hare, clay pigeons, and each other.

A certain amount of reverie is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It soothes the fever, occasionally high, of the brain at work, and produces in the mind a soft, fresh vapor that corrects the all too angular contours of pure thought, fills up the gaps and intervals here and there, binds them together, and dulls the sharp corners of ideas. But too much reverie submerges and drowns. Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie it's pleasure. To replace thought with reverie is to confound poison with nourishment.

I love him, his shoulders, his angular, stooping figure – and at the same time I see behind him woods and stars, and a clear voice utters words that bring me peace, to me, a soldier in big boots, belt, and a knapsack, taking the road that lies before him under the high heaven, quickly forgetting and seldom sorrowful, for ever pressing on under the wide night sky.

Maia screamed and woke. 'Serenity?' Cala's voice, Cala's angular shape outlined against the window. ' 'Tis an ironic title, in sooth,' Maia said feebly, realizing that the entangling garments of the nightmare were merely his bedsheets. His heart was hammering, and he was clammy with sweat.

Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.

After a seven days' march through woodland, the traveler directed toward Baucis cannot see the city and yet he has arrived. The slender stilts that rise from the ground at a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds support the city. You climb them with ladders. On the ground the inhabitants rarely show themselves: having already everything they need up there, they prefer not to come down. Nothing of the city touches the earth except those long flamingo legs on which it rests and, when the days are sunny, a pierced, angular shadow that falls on the foilage. "There are three hypotheses about the inhabitants of Baucis: that they hate the earth; that they respect it so much they avoid all contact; that they love it as it was before they existed and with spyglasses and telescopes aimed downward they never tire of examining it, leaf by leaf, stone by stone, ant by ant, contemplating with fascination their own absence.

She was probably male, to judge from the angular mazelike patterns quilting her shirt. I wasn’t entirely certain. It wouldn’t have mattered, if I had been in Radch space. Radchaai don’t care much about gender, and the language they speak—my own first language—doesn’t mark gender in any way.

Aquí es donde Dios quiere que esté su pueblo… en la frontera, sosteniendo y guardando sus Mandamientos, que son la piedra angular de la existencia moral del hombre. ¿En qué otro sitio podemos estar?

That is what hatred is. It will feed you and at the same time turn you to rot. It is hard and deep and angular, a system of blockades. It is everything and total.

Here we are sitting at the Waldorf in a conference room... and in comes someone with long hair and wearing an outfit dripping leather. I remember whispering to Dave Connell, "How do we know that man back there isn't going to throw a bomb up here or toss a hand grenade?" Connell, always one to keep a cool head, assessed the situation with care. He discreetly turned his head toward the back and realized he recognized the tall, angular man carrying a small purse under his arm. A slight smile curled as he assured Cooney the hippie back there posed no threat. "Not likely, that's Jim Henson," he said.

Many obese people spend a significant amount of their energy on suppressing the urge to tell some of the people who are staring at them that they do not eat as much and as frequently as they seem to.

What actually happened was something absurdly simple and unspectacular: I stopped thinking. [...] Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down. For once, words really failed me. Past and future dropped away. I forgot who and what I was, my name, manhood, animalhood, all that could be called mine. It was as if I had been born that instant, brand new, mindless, innocent of all memories. There existed only the Now, that present moment and what was clearly given in it. To look was enough. And what I found was khaki trouserlegs terminating downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves terminating sideways in a pair of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfront terminating upwards in—absolutely nothing whatever! Certainly not in a head. It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything—room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.

The speaker was stringy and angular, his blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, his plaid workman's shirtsleeves rolled up around his pale biceps. Journalism major, I guessed.

But here was all the timorousness and angularity of inexperienced youth, a feeling of awkwardness, and an impression of bewilderment, as if someone had suddenly knocked at the door.

His physiognomy had an air of requesting your attention, which it rewarded or not, according to the charm you found in a blue eye of remarkable fixedness and a jaw of somewhat angular mold, which is supposed to bespeak resolution.

Dear friend…' The Witcher swore quietly, looking at the sharp, angular, even runes drawn with energetic sweeps of the pen, faultlessly reflecting the author’s mood. He felt once again the desire to try to bite his own backside in fury. When he was writing to the sorceress a month ago he had spent two nights in a row contemplating how best to begin. Finally, he had decided on “Dear friend.” Now he had his just deserts. 'Dear friend, your unexpected letter – which I received not quite three years after we last saw each other – has given me much joy. My joy is all the greater as various rumours have been circulating about your sudden and violent death. It is a good thing that you have decided to disclaim them by writing to me; it is a good thing, too, that you are doing so so soon. From your letter it appears that you have lived a peaceful, wonderfully boring life, devoid of all sensation. These days such a life is a real privilege, dear friend, and I am happy that you have managed to achieve it. I was touched by the sudden concern which you deigned to show as to my health, dear friend. I hasten with the news that, yes, I now feel well; the period of indisposition is behind me, I have dealt with the difficulties, the description of which I shall not bore you with. It worries and troubles me very much that the unexpected present you received from Fate brings you worries. Your supposition that this requires professional help is absolutely correct. Although your description of the difficulty – quite understandably – is enigmatic, I am sure I know the Source of the problem. And I agree with your opinion that the help of yet another magician is absolutely necessary. I feel honoured to be the second to whom you turn. What have I done to deserve to be so high on your list? Rest assured, my dear friend; and if you had the intention of supplicating the help of additional magicians, abandon it because there is no need. I leave without delay, and go to the place which you indicated in an oblique yet, to me, understandable way. It goes without saying that I leave in absolute secrecy and with great caution. I will surmise the nature of the trouble on the spot and will do all that is in my power to calm the gushing source. I shall try, in so doing, not to appear any worse than other ladies to whom you have turned, are turning or usually turn with your supplications. I am, after all, your dear friend. Your valuable friendship is too important to me to disappoint you, dear friend. Should you, in the next few years, wish to write to me, do not hesitate for a moment. Your letters invariably give me boundless pleasure. Your friend Yennefer' The letter smelled of lilac and gooseberries. Geralt cursed.

the nameless maiden in the advertisement was like a thousand other clothing models he had seen in magazines—arched brows, big eyes, angular cheeks, pouting mouth, a fetching figure, and a haughty, revolted look, as though someone had just offered her a jellyfish to hold.

You looked so beautiful- your hair spread out around your head against the linoleum. Though your think brown curls had thinned since you'd started losing weight, they still fell in soft waves. You reminded me of a mermaid, your skin all shiny, your lips so full compared to the harshness of your angular cheekbones and pointed chin.

The statue was of a young man with a tall, gaunt body and an angular face. He held his head as if he faced a challenge and found joy in his capacity to meet it.

Instead of tall and angular shapes regarded as masculine and aggressive, she now turned to soft, rounded forms identified as female or nurturing.

His hair was a lighter shade of brown than Jared’s, and his eyes were a deep blue, while Jared’s were a haunting gray. They both had similar angular jaws and drop-dead-gorgeous looks.

That’s what happens in our hearts. The holes do not disappear, but scar tissue grows and becomes part of who we are. The same takes place in nature. As the famous Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi observed, 'There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature.' The most stable structures in nature— like trees or spiderwebs— have angular and curved lines. As our hearts grow larger, and we learn that scar tissue is not so ugly after all, we accommodate what we had thought would be unendurable. And we realize that the wisdom we have gained would not have been possible without the losses we have known, even those that seemed impossible to bear.

Eve supposed everything about Nadine looked mag, from her sweep of streaky blonde hair to the toes of her jazzed shoes. She had a foxy, angular face, observant green eyes, and a slim body that curved appropriately in her on-camera suit of power red. She was smart, she was sneaky, she was cynical. And for reasons Eve imagined neither of them fully understood, they’d become friends.

He, on the other hand, had the look of royalty, from his angular face and regal posture down to the modern yet tailored fit of his mint colored button down shirt and khaki pants. Not many men could wear pastels and still manage to look like they could hunt down some predatory animal, cook it up for dinner, and then use its hide to make you a purse.

Due to some mental hiccup I can’t explain, when I think of God, I picture Hugh Hefner: a thin, angular man with a prominent chin in a maroon smoking jacket.

His face is so chiseled and angular that if he stood on the street corner and blushed, oncoming traffic would come to a complete stop.

I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave “V” words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land’s-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp.

The moving of the boulders was weary and painful work. We came to know every one of the stones by sight and touch, and I have vivid memories of their angular peculiarities even to-day.

Thence, we drove a few miles across a swamp, along a raised shell road, with a canal on one hand and a dense wood on the other; and here and there, in the distance, a ragged and angular-limbed and moss-bearded cypress, top standing out, clear cut against the sky, and as quaint of form as the apple-trees in Japanese pictures—such was our course and the surroundings of it.

Jane was the most fearless woman Oliver had ever met. Sometimes, Oliver thought that society was like an infant trying to shove a square, colored block through a round hole. When it didn’t go, the child pounded harder. Oliver had been shoved through round holes so often that he’d scarcely even noticed that his edges had become rounded. But Jane…Jane persisted in being angular and square. The harder she was pushed, the more square—and the more colorful—she became.

angular momentum appears in two forms : one of them is angular momentum of motion, and the other is angular momentum in electric and magnetic fields. There is angular momentum in the field around the magnet, although it does not appear as motion, and this has the opposite sign to the spin. If

Seen on her own, the woman was not so remarkable. Tall, angular, aquiline features, with the close-cropped hair which was fashionably called an Eton crop, he seemed to remember, in his mother's day, and about her person the stamp of that particular generation. She would be in her middle sixties, he supposed, the masculine shirt with collar and tie, sports jacket, grey tweed skirt coming to mid-calf. Grey stockings and laced black shoes. He had seen the type on golf courses and at dog shows - invariably showing not sporting breeds but pugs - and if you came across them at a party in somebody's house they were quicker on the draw with a cigarette lighter than he was himself, a mere male, with pocket matches. The general belief that they kept house with a more feminine, fluffy companion was not always true. Frequently they boasted, and adored, a golfing husband. ("Don't Look Now")

Narrow, angular features, pouty lips and hatred-filled pale, washed-out blue irises glared back at him. Caleb flashed the young man a malevolent smirk and readied his blade. “Jude Winslow, I presume.

She grabbed her briefcase and took a step toward him. “You don’t have a last name?” “Everyone has a last name.” His hand hovered in the air, waiting. He was forcing her to cross the marble floor to meet him, and like a Luna moth drawn to a midnight moon, she drifted toward him. When she reached him, she took his hand and looked up into his face. “Is it Jones? Smith? Or Brown?” His lips twitched. “None of the above.” “And you won’t tell me?” “It’s not necessary information.” She tilted her head, studying his angular features. “You don’t look like an Adrian.” His smile broadened. “Imagine that.” “More like a Carlos, or a Juan, or a Diego.” “Those are Hispanic names.” “Aren’t you Hispanic?” “I’m anything you want me to be.

He hadn’t changed since I had seen him a few years earlier. With his close-cropped black beard, angular features, and riveting gaze, Craig still looks the role of a serious scholar. He speaks in cogent sentences, never losing his train of thought, always working through an answer methodically, point by point, fact by fact.

Grim faced and forbidding Their faces closed tight An angular mass of New Yorkers Pacing in rhythm Race the oncoming night They chase through the streets of Manhattan Head first humanity Pause at a light Then flow through the streets of the city They seem oblivious To a soft spring rain Like an English rain So light, yet endless From a leaden sky

Say something, Jess. Say anything. And just when I'm about to think of what I should say next, my mouth goes into whacked overdrive like I'm possessed. “The graphic art in Clone Wars is my favorite,” I say. “I love how they drew the characters. You know—how everything looks so angular and—” My words tangle and freeze when my brain finally arrives to shut it down. Say something but NOT THAT, you psycho! “Clone Wars. Love it, do I? Yesss.” He's actually responded in a Yoda voice! I blink. His eyes are kind, sparkling with laughter and still, all too green. Yoda green!

His five feet three rested angular on the folding chair, a body small, well-wrought and somehow precious, as if it were the forgotten creation of any goldsmith—even Cellini—shrouded now in dark serge and waiting to be put up for auction.

The statue was of a young man with a tall, gaunt body and an angular face. He held his head as if he faced a challenge and found joy in his capacity to meet it. All that Dagny wanted of life was contained in the desire to hold her head as he did.

Niniane thought she saw something odd as Aryal looked back at them. The harpy's eyes were narrowed, her angular face white with strain. Niniane might have been mistaken. Dangling upside down, everything looked wrong. People moved in weird ways, their smiles all turned down, and liquid spilled from drinks falling up. It was like looking in a carnival hall of mirrors in a dream.

The various objects for the decoration of a room should be so selected that no colour or design shall be repeated. If you have a living flower, a painting of flowers is not allowable. If you are using a round kettle, the water pitcher should be angular. A cup with a black glaze should not be associated with a tea-caddy of black lacquer. In placing a vase of an incense burner on the tokonoma, care should be taken not to put it in the exact centre, lest it divide the space into equal halves. The pillar of the tokonoma should be of a different kind of wood from the other pillars, in order to break any suggestion of monotony in the room.

There she was, bundled into sweats and a long wool coat five sizes too large for her, her curls hidden by a massive gray hat with earflaps-a look that could have been pulled off effectively only by someone in 1930s Siberia...or a supremely angular male model.

As Cotton holds the door open for me, and our bodies grow closer, I notice how much older he is than me. At least eight years, I’d guess. Too old, and yet young enough for me to admire the single dimple in his left cheek — a sharp contrast to his angular face.

A hint of lace had been added at her cleavage, accentuating the fact that, at fourteen, Peony had already developed curves that Cinder couldn’t begin to hope for. If Cinder’s body had ever been predisposed to femininity, it had been ruined by whatever the surgeons had done to her, leaving her with a stick-straight figure. Too angular. Too boyish. Too awkward with her heavy artificial leg.

I turned, feeling steady but somewhat dazed, and looked from the hand, now on my elbow, up the strong arm, around the curve of the bulky shoulder, and over the angular jaw and chin, until my eyes met the breath-hijacking sight of Sir Handsome McHotpants’s piercing blue eyes. I cringed.

Tall and angular, with hair the color of burnt buttered toast pulled back and secured with a pencil, she stood, hands on hips, her lips unapologetically red, her skin luminous, her nose straight. She looked down at him like a battlefield medic assessing whether or not he was worth saving.

They flourished and shone with jewels, lovely clothes, brilliant hair and dazzling complexions; when they danced they really did seem to float, except when it was the Charleston, and that, though angular, was so accomplished that it made us gasp with admiration. Their conversation was quite evidently both daring and witty, one could see it ran like a river, splashing, dashing, and glittering in the sun. Linda was entranced by them, and decided then and there that she would become one of these brilliant beings and live in their world, even if it took her a lifetime to accomplish.

He had a face made for magazine covers. Could someone say GQ model? That razor sharp jaw and those angular features caught the light just right. If she’d had a camera she wouldn’t mind snapping a few pictures. And those lips…she stopped. She didn’t know him, and something told her she shouldn’t get to know him.

It had been in a Paris house, with many people around, and my dear friend Jules Darboux, wishing to do me a refined aesthetic favor, had touched my sleeve and said, "I want you to meet-" and led me to Nina, who sat in the corner of a couch, her body folded Z-wise, with an ashtray at her heel, and she took a long turquoise cigarette holder from her lips and joyfully, slowly exclaimed, "Well, of all people-" and then all evening my heart felt like breaking, as I passed from group to group with a sticky glass in my fist, now and then looking at her from a distance (she did not look...), and listening to scraps of conversation, and overheard one man saying to another, "Funny, how they all smell alike, burnt leaf through whatever perfume they use, those angular dark-haired girls," and as it often happens, a trivial remark related to some unknown topic coiled and clung to one's own intimate recollection, a parasite of its sadness.

The first time she saw Jag Silvertree she was watering the garden, and her clematis got soaked as she dreamt of melting into his face. The second time she saw Jag she knew she would never feel his angular jaw against her thighs. For Jag Silvertree carried around with him a hurt that she figured would stand out in a field of wounded soldiers.

Our teacher, Mr. Stratton, was way distracting with his angular face and broad shoulders. The dark-rimmed glasses he wore had caused many a breathy sigh from his students when he’d adjusted them on his face. One time he’d bitten his lip, pulling it between his teeth in a totally sexy way and I swear, I could smell the estrogen surge in the room.

Wren, in her sleeping robe, standing close to a tall wolf demon, her head craned back to face him. The wolf: Moon caste, marbled ash-gray fur flowing silkily over angular features, a diamond-shaped patch of white on his long, muzzlelike jaw. He’s dressed in soldier’s clothes. One pawed hand is lifted to cup Wren’s face, like the beginning of a kiss.

He was almost six, that tender age when the baby plumpness starts to melt away from children's bodies and you can see, in their newly angular faces, the people they might become.

Big, bulbous, ruddy buildings with vast ballrooms, grand, angular staircases, and as many turrets and crenellations as a recreational condom. The

One, a young man, was tall, thin and angular; even muffled inside a heavy dark coat he walked a little like an affronted heron. The

At intervals along the walls the tiles gave way to large mosaics—simple angular patterns in bright colors. Trillian stopped and studied one of them but could not interpret any sense in them. She called to Zaphod. “Hey, have you any idea what these strange symbols are?” “I think they’re just strange symbols of some kind,” said Zaphod, hardly glancing back. Trillian shrugged and hurried after him.

The house had a name and a history; the old gentleman taking his tea would have been delighted to tell you these things: how it had been built under Edward the Sixth, had offered a night's hospitality to the great Elizabeth (whose august person had extended itself upon a huge, magnificent and terribly angular bed which still formed the principal honour of the sleeping apartments), had been a good deal bruised and defaced in Cromwell's wars, and then, under the Restoration, repaired and much enlarged; and how, finally, after having been remodeled and disfigured in the eighteenth century, it had passed into the careful keeping of a shrewd American banker, who had bought it originally because (owing to circumstances too complicated to set forth) it was offered at a great bargain: bought it with much grumbling at its ugliness, its antiquity, its incommodity, and who now, at the end of twenty years, had become conscious of a real aesthetic passion for it, so that he know all its points and would tell you just where to stand to see them in combination and just the hour when the shadows of its various protuberances--which fell so softly upon the warm, weary brickwork--were of the right measure.

He was only five-foot-ten, but people frequently mistook him for being over six feet, at least in part because his gigantic Afro made him appear larger than life. His thin, angular frame, which was shaped like an inverted triangle, furthered this illusion; he had narrow hips, a small waist, but impossibly wide shoulders and arms. His fingers were abnormally long and sinuous, and like the rest of him, they were a rich caramel color. His bandmates jokingly called him “The Bat” because of his preference for covering his windows and sleeping during the day, but the nickname also fit his penchant for wearing capes, which furthered his superhero appearance.

It was obvious in them too that love had gone through them: that is, the physical experience. It is curious what a subtle but unmistakable transmutation it makes, both in the body of men and women: the woman more blooming, more subtly rounded, her young angularities softened, and her expression either anxious or triumphant: the man much quieter, more inward, the very shapes of his shoulders and his buttocks less assertive, more hesitant.

Sometimes a voice—have you heard this?— wants not to be voice any longer, wants something whispering between the words, some rumour of its former life. Sometimes, even in the midst of making sense or conversation, it will hearken back to breath, or even farther, to the wind, and recognize itself as troubled air, a flight path still looking for its bird.

The status was of a young man with a tall, gaunt body and an angular face. He held his head as if he faced a challenge and found joy in his capacity to meet it. All that Dagny wanted of life was contained in the desire to hold her head as he did.

On July 11, Lincoln appeared at Fort Stevens, north of Washington, which was under fire from Early’s men. To soothe an alarmed populace, Lincoln and Stanton rode there in an open carriage. The tall, angular president, peeping over the fort’s parapet, made a prime target for Confederate marksmen, and one Union soldier (possibly Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.), unaware it was Lincoln, shouted, “Get down, you fool.”13 It was the only time in American history a sitting president came under fire in combat.

A face that bore no mark of pain or fear or guilt...The shape of his mouth was pride, and more: it was as if he took pride in being proud. The angular planes of his cheeks made her think of arrogance, of tension, of scorn—yet the face had none of these qualities, it had their final sum: a look of serene determination and of certainty, and the look of a ruthless innocence which would not seek forgiveness or grant it. It was a face that had nothing to hide or to escape, a face with no fear of being seen or of seeing, so that the first thing she grasped about him was the intense perceptiveness of his eyes—he looked as if his faculty of sight were his best-loved tool and its exercise were a limitless, joyous adventure, as if his eyes imparted a superlative value to himself and to the world—to himself for his ability to see, to the world for being a place so eagerly worth seeing. It seemed to her for a moment that she was in the presence of a being who was pure consciousness—yet she had never been so aware of a man’s body.

The existence of the terrible in every particle of the air. You breathe it in as part of something transparent; but within you it precipitates, hardens, acquires angular, geometrical forms in among your organs; for all the torments and horrors suffered at places of execution, in torture chambers, in madhouses, in operating theatres, under the arches of bridges in late autumn – all this is possessed of a tenacious permanence, all of it persists and, jealous of all that is, clings to its own frightful reality. People would prefer to be able to forget much of it; sleep files away gently at the grooves in the brain, but dreams drive it away and trace the lines anew. And they wake, panting, and dissolve the gleam of a candle in the dark, and drink in the half-lit solace as if it were sugared water.

She was wearing a dress of some soft dark red material, and sitting as she was with the light from the long narrow window behind her, she reminded Kemp of a stained glass figure he had once seen in a cathedral abroad. The long oval of her face and the slight angularity of her shoulders helped the illusion. Saint Somebody or other, they had told him—but Lady Alexandra Farraday was no saint—not by a long way. And yet some of these old saints had been funny people from his point of view, not kindly ordinary decent Christian folk, but intolerant, fanatical, cruel to themselves and others.

Across from me at the kitchen table, my mother smiles over red wine that she drinks out of a measuring glass. She says she doesn’t deprive herself, but I’ve learned to find nuance in every movement of her fork. In every crinkle in her brow as she offers me the uneaten pieces on her plate. I’ve realized she only eats dinner when I suggest it. I wonder what she does when I’m not there to do so. Maybe this is why my house feels bigger each time I return; it’s proportional. As she shrinks the space around her seems increasingly vast. She wanes while my father waxes. His stomach has grown round with wine, late nights, oysters, poetry. A new girlfriend who was overweight as a teenager, but my dad reports that now she’s “crazy about fruit." It was the same with his parents; as my grandmother became frail and angular her husband swelled to red round cheeks, rotund stomach and I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking making space for the entrance of men into their lives not knowing how to fill it back up once they leave. I have been taught accommodation. My brother never thinks before he speaks. I have been taught to filter. “How can anyone have a relationship to food?" He asks, laughing, as I eat the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs. I want to tell say: we come from difference, Jonas, you have been taught to grow out I have been taught to grow in you learned from our father how to emit, how to produce, to roll each thought off your tongue with confidence, you used to lose your voice every other week from shouting so much I learned to absorb I took lessons from our mother in creating space around myself I learned to read the knots in her forehead while the guys went out for oysters and I never meant to replicate her, but spend enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up their habits that’s why women in my family have been shrinking for decades. We all learned it from each other, the way each generation taught the next how to knit weaving silence in between the threads which I can still feel as I walk through this ever-growing house, skin itching, picking up all the habits my mother has unwittingly dropped like bits of crumpled paper from her pocket on her countless trips from bedroom to kitchen to bedroom again, Nights I hear her creep down to eat plain yogurt in the dark, a fugitive stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled. Deciding how many bites is too many How much space she deserves to occupy. Watching the struggle I either mimic or hate her, And I don’t want to do either anymore but the burden of this house has followed me across the country I asked five questions in genetics class today and all of them started with the word “sorry". I don’t know the requirements for the sociology major because I spent the entire meeting deciding whether or not I could have another piece of pizza a circular obsession I never wanted but inheritance is accidental still staring at me with wine-stained lips from across the kitchen table.

Gone as usual in the morning, and me left behind and naked, inner thighs lightly scaled with the dried spoor of our lovemaking: she liked to stay on top afterward and let the juice run down, and I liked whatever she liked. Imagining in the shower that I could smell her still, the angular scent of those secret bones, had she always smelled so fierce and so good? Recalling those gone times, old memories lit by the fire of the new, I did not this time wonder how long it would last; I was too smart for that now. Take what you get, and don’t think. Of course it could never be that easy, but there were moments, like now, that I could successfully pretend that it was, and I had no inclination to try to peer past those moments. I’m not one who wants to know the future: at the best it spoils the present, with longing or dismay, and at the worst, well. Who really wants to find out how tight the sling is, for your own very personal ass, who wants to know how deep the shit will really be? Not you. Not me either. Because it’s rarely bliss saved up, is it, when you finally get there. I’ll take my now, waking with a lover’s scent on me, around me, take my hopes before they’re maybe tragedy; a good morning is still a good morning, even if it leads to apocalypse at night.

The will surrenders to the resolve and dignity of the written word, and I, the gentle self, step forward, pattering up the ramp, one half of an incomplete person, knowing with certainty that I cannot live – yet wondering if I could possibly write? Slight and weary and full of angularity, my heart is never un-broken, but I am unable to call out. I have a sudden urge to write something down, but this time they are words that must take a lead. Unless I can combine poetry with recorded noise, have I any right to be? Yet, let it begin, for who is to say what you should or shouldn’t do? In fact, everyone tries to knot your desires lest your success highlight their own failure.

Another class of universal truths is the conservation laws, where the amount of some measured quantity remains unchanged no matter what. The three most important are the conservation of mass and energy, the conservation of linear and angular momentum, and the conservation of electric charge. These laws are in evidence on Earth, and everywhere we have thought to look—from the domain of particle physics to the large-scale structure of the universe. In spite of this boasting, all is not perfect in paradise. It happens that we cannot see, touch, or taste the source of eighty-five percent of the gravity we measure in the universe. This mysterious dark matter, which remains undetected except for its gravitational pull on matter we see, may be composed of exotic particles that we have yet to discover or identify. A small minority of astrophysicists, however, are unconvinced and have suggested that there is no dark matter—you just need to modify Newton’s law of gravity. Simply add a few components to the equations and all will be well. Perhaps

you are a Mac user.

Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns. The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door. Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house. In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play. It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it. She looked at Calvin, and saw that he, too, was puzzled.

But creativity, she doesn’t fit in a box. She’s a wild, fluid, uncontrollable energy that spreads out sensuously from a curious, wide open mind in large expanses of aimless time on dreamy liminal train journeys or in subtle moments between waking and sleep. She can’t be pushed, or coughed up, or beaten into submission by a brutal and unmerciful regime. She needs light, and breath, and space and then, maybe, if the mood takes her, she’ll unfurl her wings and let her colors run into the atmosphere. And this energy, this wild, fun, unpredictable magic that I’d played with so happily as a child, that had flowed through me like it was my very life force up until this point; I didn’t understand it anymore. Creativity was this swirling wild mysterious language, but now I lived in a colorless angular world that promised me a certainty I valued above all else. And where before, I was just scribbling, writing, moving for the mere joy of it, now I tried to commodify my creativity. I tried to squeeze it out and make it do something worthwhile, be special, be important, be good. I could no longer see the point of art if it wasn’t good. But that’s the tricky thing about art, it’s never strictly good or bad, it’s just expression, or excretion. It couldn’t be measure by scales or charts, or contained in small manageable segments in the day. It was always, by its very nature, so imperfect. And the imperfections drove me mad. The anxiety and frustration with my creative endeavors turned into an actual fear of blank pages and pallets of paint. There was too much potential and too much room to fail so day by day, I chose perfection over creativity. I chose no more creativity, and no more mistakes. There are things that eating disorders takes from you that are more important, much greater and more profound a loss, and much much more difficult to recover and restore completely than body fat. And that reckless urge to create, just for the pure, senseless joy of it, would become the one I missed the most.

Side by side on the narrow shawl knelt the two wanderers, the little prattling child and the reckless, hardened adventurer. Her chubby face, and his haggard, angular visage were both turned up to the cloudless heaven in heartfelt entreaty to that dread being with whom they were face to face, while the two voices — the one thin and clear, the other deep and harsh — united in the entreaty for mercy and forgiveness.

[The] structural theory is of extreme simplicity. It assumes that the molecule is held together by links between one atom and the next: that every kind of atom can form a definite small number of such links: that these can be single, double or triple: that the groups may take up any position possible by rotation round the line of a single but not round that of a double link: finally that with all the elements of the first short period [of the periodic table], and with many others as well, the angles between the valencies are approximately those formed by joining the centre of a regular tetrahedron to its angular points. No assumption whatever is made as to the mechanism of the linkage. Through the whole development of organic chemistry this theory has always proved capable of providing a different structure for every different compound that can be isolated. Among the hundreds of thousands of known substances, there are never more isomeric forms than the theory permits.

Young has a personal relationship with electricity. In Europe, where the electrical current is sixty cycles, not fifty, he can pinpoint the fluctuation --- by degrees. It dumbfounded Cragg. "He'll say, 'Larry, there's a hundred volts coming out of the wall, isn't there?' I'll go measure it, and yeah, sure --- he can hear the difference." Shakey's innovations are everywhere. Intent on controlling amp volume from his guitar instead of the amp, Young had a remote device designed called the Whizzer. Guitarists marvel at the stomp box that lies onstage at Young's feet: a byzantine gang of effects that can be utilized without any degradation to the original signal. Just constructing the box's angular red wooden housing to Young's extreme specifications had craftsmen pulling their hair out. Cradled in a stand in front of the amps is the fuse for the dynamite, Young's trademark ax--Old Black, a '53 Gold Top Les Paul some knot-head daubed with black paint eons ago. Old Black's features include a Bigsby wang bar, which pulls strings and bends notes, and Firebird picking so sensitive you can talk through it. It's a demonic instrument. "Old black doesn't sound like any other guitar," said Cragg, shaking his head. For Cragg, Old Black is a nightmare. Young won't permit the ancient frets to be changed, likes his strings old and used, and the Bigsby causes the guitar to go out of tune constantly. "At Sound check, everything will work great. Neil picks up the guitar, and for some reason that's when things go wrong.

El viaje por el mundo es un peregrinar de una provincia a otra, y cada una de ellas es una estrella solitaria que brilla sólo para sí misma. Para la mayoría de la gente que vive allí, el mundo real se acaba en el umbral de su casa, en el límite de su aldea o, todo lo más, en la frontera de su valle. El mundo situado más allá no es real ni importante, ni tan siquiera necesario, mientras que el que se tiene a mano, el que se abarca con la vista, aumenta ante nuestros ojos hasta alcanzar el tamaño de un cosmos tan inmenso que nos impide ver todo lo demás. Ocurre a menudo que el habitante del lugar y el que llega desde lejos tienen grandes dificultades a la hora de encontrar un lenguaje común, pues cada uno de ellos se sirve de una óptica diferente para mirar el mismo paisaje. El visitante usa un gran angular, que le da una imagen alejada y reducida, y, en contrapartida, una larga línea de horizonte; en tanto que el interlocutor local siempre ha usado un teleobjetivo o incluso un telescopio, que aumenta hasta el detalle lo más insignificante.

We do not converse. She visits me to talk. My task to murmur. She talks about her grandsons, her daughter who lives in Delphi, her sister or her husband - both gone - obscure friends - dead - obscurer aunts and uncles - lost - ancient neighbors, members of her church or of her clubs - passed or passing on; and in this way she brings the ends of her life together with a terrifying rush: she is a girl, a wife, a mother, widow, all at once. All at once - appalling - but I believe it; I wince in expectation of the clap. Her talk's a fence - shade drawn, window fastened, door that's locked - for no one dies taking tea in a kitchen; and as her years compress and begin to jumble, I really believe in the brevity of life; I sweat in my wonder; death is the dog down the street, the angry gander, bedroom spider, goblin who's come to get her; and it occurs to me that in my listening posture I'm the boy who suffered the winds of my grandfather with an exactly similar politeness, that I am, right now, all my ages, out in elbows, as angular as badly stacekd cards. Thus was I, when I loved you, every man I could be, youth and child - far from enough - and you, so strangely ambiguous a being, met me, h eart for spade, play after play, the whole run of our suits.

He soñado con aquella canción, con aquellas extrañas palabras y su sencilla melodía, y en diversas ocasiones, en el sueño, he entendido lo que decía. En esos sueños yo también hablaba aquella lengua, la primera lengua, y tenía poder sobre la naturaleza de todo lo real. En mis sueños, era la lengua de lo que existe, y cualquier cosa hablada en esa lengua se volvia real, porque nada de lo que se dijera en ese idioma podía ser mentira. Es la piedra angular de todo. En mis sueños he utilizado ese idioma para curar a los enfermos y para volar; una vez soñé que regentaba una perfecta y moesta casa rural en la costa, y a todos los que venían a hospedarse en ella les decía, en ese idioma: <>. Y se cumplía, dejaban de ser personas rotas, porque yo les había hablado en la lengua creadora.

Letter You can see it already: chalks and ochers; Country crossed with a thousand furrow-lines; Ground-level rooftops hidden by the shrubbery; Sporadic haystacks standing on the grass; Smoky old rooftops tarnishing the landscape; A river (not Cayster or Ganges, though: A feeble Norman salt-infested watercourse); On the right, to the north, bizarre terrain All angular--you'd think a shovel did it. So that's the foreground. An old chapel adds Its antique spire, and gathers alongside it A few gnarled elms with grumpy silhouettes; Seemingly tired of all the frisky breezes, They carp at every gust that stirs them up. At one side of my house a big wheelbarrow Is rusting; and before me lies the vast Horizon, all its notches filled with ocean blue; Cocks and hens spread their gildings, and converse Beneath my window; and the rooftop attics, Now and then, toss me songs in dialect. In my lane dwells a patriarchal rope-maker; The old man makes his wheel run loud, and goes Retrograde, hemp wreathed tightly round the midriff. I like these waters where the wild gale scuds; All day the country tempts me to go strolling; The little village urchins, book in hand, Envy me, at the schoolmaster's (my lodging), As a big schoolboy sneaking a day off. The air is pure, the sky smiles; there's a constant Soft noise of children spelling things aloud. The waters flow; a linnet flies; and I say: "Thank you! Thank you, Almighty God!"--So, then, I live: Peacefully, hour by hour, with little fuss, I shed My days, and think of you, my lady fair! I hear the children chattering; and I see, at times, Sailing across the high seas in its pride, Over the gables of the tranquil village, Some winged ship which is traveling far away, Flying across the ocean, hounded by all the winds. Lately it slept in port beside the quay. Nothing has kept it from the jealous sea-surge: No tears of relatives, nor fears of wives, Nor reefs dimly reflected in the waters, Nor importunity of sinister birds.

I’m a decade her senior. I was a friend of her father, and I’m sure she looks upon me like a benevolent uncle. Even if she didn’t, I promised Charles I wouldn’t lay a hand on her.” The Earl of Marsden had been one of his dearest friends-practically his only friend. A promise to such a friend should not be easily broken. Archer jerked back, disbelief coloring his angular features. “Why the hell did you do that?” Grey shrugged. “He asked it of me.” Shaking his head, Archer exhaled a breath. “You never told me that before.” “I suppose I was ashamed.” And hurt, even though he understood his friend only made the request to protect his only child from a man whose sexual conquests had resulted in his being marked for like. Were the situation reversed, Grey might have very well demanded the same promise. And despite being a libertine, he was a man of his word. Archer stared at him for a long moment, elbow braced on the table, chin resting on his thumb as his index finger stroked his stubbled upper lip. “Devil take it, Grey. Charles Danvers was one cruel bugger.” A bitter smile curved Grey’s lips at the insult to his late friend. “Quite.

The German mathematician Emmy Noether proved in 1915 that each continuous symmetry of our mathematical structure leads to a so-called conservation law of physics, whereby some quantity is guaranteed to stay constant-and thereby has the sort of permanence that might make self-aware observers take note of it and give it a "baggage" name. All the conserved quantities that we discussed in Chapter 7 correspond to such symmetries: for example, energy corresponds to time-translation symmetry (that our laws of physics stay the same for all time), momentum corresponds to space-translation symmetry (that the laws are the same everywhere), angular momentum corresponds to rotation symmetry (that empty space has no special "up" direction) and electric charge corresponds to a certain symmetry of quantum mechanics. The Hungarian physicist Eugene Wigner went on to show that these symmetries also dictated all the quantum properties that particles can have, including mass and spin. In other words, between the two of them, Noether and Wigner showed that, at least in our own mathematical structure, studying the symmetries reveals what sort of "stuff" can exist in it.

From Tomorrow to Yesterday The tree trunks move in time with the rhythm of her rubber soles on the wet path, where the air is still cool after the night rain. The woodland floor is white with anemones; in one place, growing close to the roots of an ancient tree, they make her think of an old, wrinkled hand. She could go on and on without getting tired, without meeting anyone or thinking of anything in particular, and without coming to the edge of the woods. As if the town did not begin just behind the trees, the leafy suburb with its peaceful roads and its houses hidden behind close-trimmed hedges. She doesn't want to think about anything, and almost succeeds; her body is no more than a porous, pulsating machine. The sun breaks through the clouds as she runs back, its light diffused on the gravel drive and the magnolia in front of the kitchen window. His car is no longer parked beside hers, he must have left while she was in the woods. He hadn't stirred when she rose, and she'd already been in bed when he came home late last night. She lay with her back turned, eyes closed, as he undressed, taking care not to wake her. She leans against one of the pillars of the garage and stretches, before emptying the mailbox and letting herself into the house. She puts the mail on the kitchen table. The little light on the coffeemaker is on; she switches it off. Not so long ago, she would have felt a stab of irritation or a touch of tenderness, depending on her mood. He always forgets to turn off that machine. She puts the kettle on, sprinkles tea leaves into the pot, and goes over to the kitchen window. She observes the magnolia blossoms, already starting to open. They'll have to talk about it, of course, but neither of them seems able to find the right words, the right moment. She pauses on her way through the sitting room. She stands amid her furniture looking out over the lawn and the pond at the end of the garden. The canopies of the trees are dimly reflected in the shining water. She goes into the bathroom. The shower door is still spotted with little drops. As time went on they have come to make contact during the day only briefly, like passing strangers. But that's the way it has been since the children left home, nothing unusual in that. She takes off her clothes and stands in front of the mirror where a little while ago he stood shaving. She greets her reflection with a wry smile. She has never been able to view herself in a mirror without this moue, as if demonstrating a certain guardedness about what she sees. The dark green eyes and wavy black hair, the angularity of her features. She dyes her hair exactly the color it would have been if she hadn't begun to go gray in her thirties, but that's her only protest against age.

Madrid. It was that time, the story of Don Zana 'The Marionette,' he with the hair of cream-colored string, he with the large and empty laugh like a slice of watermelon, the one of the Tra-kay, tra-kay, tra-kay, tra-kay, tra-kay, tra on the tables, on the coffins. It was when there were geraniums on the balconies, sunflower-seed stands in the Moncloa, herds of yearling sheep in the vacant lots of the Guindalera. They were dragging their heavy wool, eating the grass among the rubbish, bleating to the neighborhood. Sometimes they stole into the patios; they ate up the parsley, a little green sprig of parsley, in the summer, in the watered shade of the patios, in the cool windows of the basements at foot level. Or they stepped on the spread-out sheets, undershirts, or pink chemises clinging to the ground like the gay shadow of a handsome young girl. Then, then was the story of Don Zana 'The Marionette.' Don Zana was a good-looking, smiling man, thin, with wide angular shoulders. His chest was a trapezoid. He wore a white shirt, a jacket of green flannel, a bow tie, light trousers, and shoes of Corinthian red on his little dancing feet. This was Don Zana 'The Marionette,' the one who used to dance on the tables and the coffins. He awoke one morning, hanging in the dusty storeroom of a theater, next to a lady of the eighteenth century, with many white ringlets and a cornucopia of a face. Don Zana broke the flower pots with his hand and he laughed at everything. He had a disagreeable voice, like the breaking of dry reeds; he talked more than anyone, and he got drunk at the little tables in the taverns. He would throw the cards into the air when he lost, and he didn't stoop over to pick them up. Many felt his dry, wooden slap; many listened to his odious songs, and all saw him dance on the tables. He liked to argue, to go visiting in houses. He would dance in the elevators and on the landings, spill ink wells, beat on pianos with his rigid little gloved hands. The fruitseller's daughter fell in love with him and gave him apricots and plums. Don Zana kept the pits to make her believe he loved her. The girl cried when days passed without Don Zana's going by her street. One day he took her out for a walk. The fruitseller's daughter, with her quince-lips, still bloodless, ingenuously kissed that slice-of-watermelon laugh. She returned home crying and, without saying anything to anyone, died of bitterness. Don Zana used to walk through the outskirts of Madrid and catch small dirty fish in the Manzanares. Then he would light a fire of dry leaves and fry them. He slept in a pension where no one else stayed. Every morning he would put on his bright red shoes and have them cleaned. He would breakfast on a large cup of chocolate and he would not return until night or dawn.

Celia realized she'd shocked Mr. Pinter when his thick black brows drew together in a frown. His lean form seemed even more rigid than usual, and his angular features-the arrow of a nose and bladed jaw-even more stark. IN his severe morning attire of black serge and white linen, he radiated male disapproval. But why? He knew she was the only "hellion" left unmarried. Did he think she would let her brothers and sisters lose their inheritance out of some rebellious desire to thwart Gran's ultimatum? Of course he did. He'd been so kind and considerate during her recitation of the dream that she'd almost forgotten he hated her. Why else were his eyes, gray as slate after a storm, now so cold and remote? The blasted fellow was always so condescending and sure of himself, so...so... Male. "Forgive me, my lady," he said in his oddly raspy voice, "but I was unaware you had any suitors." Curse him for being right. "Well, I don't...exactly. There are men who might be interested but haven't gone so far as to offer marriage." Or even to show a partiality to her. "And you're hoping I'll twist their arms so they will?" She colored under his piercing gaze. "Don't be ridiculous." This was the Mr. Pinter she knew, the one who'd called her "a reckless society miss" and a "troublemaker." Not that she cared what he thought. He was like her brother's friends, who saw her as a tomboy because she could demonstrate a rifle's fine qualities. And like Cousin Ned. Scrawny bitch with no tits-you don't have an ounce of anything female on you. Curse Ned to hell.

Before he could explain further, however, Rhys happened to catch sight of a slim, dark shape walking past the doorway. It was only a fleeting glimpse... but it was enough to send a jolt of awareness through him. "You," he said in a voice that carried out into the hallway. "Whoever just passed by the door. Come here." In the riveting silence, a young woman appeared at the threshold. Her features were delicately angular, her silver blue eyes round and wide-set. As she stood at the edge of the lamplight, her fair skin and pale blond hair seemed to hold their own radiance, an effect he'd seen in paintings of Old Testament angels. "There's a grain about it," Rhys's father had always said when he'd wanted to describe something fine and polished and perfect, something of the highest quality. Oh, there was a grain about this woman. She was only medium height, but her extreme slenderness gave her the illusion of being taller. Her breasts were high and gently rounded beneath the high-necked dress, and for a pleasurable, disorienting moment Rhys remembered resting his head there as she had given him sips of orchid tea. "Say something," he commanded gruffly. The shy glow of her smile gilded the air. "I'm glad to see you in better health, Mr. Winterborne." Helen's voice. She was more beautiful than starlight, and just as unattainable. As he stared at her, Rhys was bitterly reminded of the upper-class ladies who had looked at him with contempt when he was a shop boy, holding their skirts back if he passed near them on the street, the way they would seek to avoid a filthy stray dog. "Is there something I can do for you?" she asked. Rhys shook his head, still unable to take his gaze from her. "I only wanted a face to go with the voice.

Lights like stars whirled past me from out of the darkness, and when I opened my eyes, I was lying on a bed covered in rich tapestry and piled high with pillows. The room was lit by candles in colossal iron holders that flickered on the walls. A great fire was ablaze in the hearth. I recognized the triptych of slender, arched windows, though I was seeing them for the first time from the inside. No longer empty, they were fitted with glass through which I could make out some of the stars that hovered over Whitby on a clear night. We were inside the abbey, though apparently outside time. The room was warm and the roof intact, and he was lying beside me. 'Every moment that has ever existed in time is still here, Mina- every thought, every memory, and every experience.' Now that I saw him in the candlelight, he was more beautiful than I had imagined. Skin marble white, paler than mine and glowing, and hair like the night sea's glossy waves. His face was long and angular with a strong brow, like the artist's renderings I had of the Arthurian knights. With his midnight blue wolf eyes, he stared at me, taking me in. "Who are you?" I asked, my voice timid and feeble. 'You and I have gone by many names. It does not matter what we call each other. What matters is that you remember. Do you remember, Mina?' His lips did not move, and yet I heard every word that he said, I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but one long and slender finger reached out and touched my lips. Locking eyes with me, he slid my nightdress from my shoulder. Shock waves rippled through my body as his finger followed the curve under my neck, dusting my chin, and slowly sliding to the other ear. Surely just one finger could not create this bedlam inside me. 'Ah, so you do remember.' My heart palpitated wildly, but I was not afraid. Something familiar about him prevented me from fearing him, though I had witnessed how dangerous he could be on the banks of the Thames when he had thrashed my attacker. "Yes, yes, I remember," I said. I would have said anything to keep his hand on me, to wallow in the wild energy he brought to my body, and to stare into the infinite violet blue of his eyes. Though I said nothing else, every nerve in my body begged him to keep touching me. 'What is your desire?' I did not have the audacity to say the words aloud, but this being knew me and knew my thoughts. Our eyes were locked, and our minds were linked. I felt connected to him in a way that I had not known with another person. We were not one, but we were in harmony, as if we were both parts of the same symphony.

Here before you lies the memorial to St. Cefnogwr, though he is not buried here, of course.” At her words, an uncanny knowing flushed through Katy and, crazy-of-crazy, transfixed her. “Why? Where is he?” Traci stepped forward, hand on her hip. A you’re-right-on-cue look crossed the guide’s face. She pointed to the ceiling. Traci scoffed. “I meant, where’s the body?” Her American southern accent lent a strange contrast to her skepticism. Again, the tour guide’s arthritic finger pointed upward, and a smile tugged at her lips, the smokers’ wrinkles on her upper lip smoothing out. “That’s the miracle that made him a saint, you see. Throughout the twelve hundreds, the Welsh struggled to maintain our independence from the English. During Madog’s Rebellion in 1294, St. Cefnogwr, a noble Norman-English knight, turned against his liege lord and sided with the Welsh—” “Norman-English?” Katy frowned, her voice raspy in her dry throat. “Why would a Norman have a Welsh name and side with the Welsh?” She might be an American, but her years living in England had taught her that was unusual. “The English nicknamed him. It means ‘sympathizer’ in Welsh. The knight was captured and, for his crime, sentenced to hang. As he swung, the rope creaking in the crowd’s silence, an angel of mercy swooped down and—” She clapped her hands in one decisive smack, and everyone jumped. “The rope dangled empty, free of its burden. Proof, we say, of his noble cause. He’s been venerated ever since as a Welsh hero.” Another chill danced over Katy’s skin. A chill that flashed warm as the story seeped into her. Familiar. Achingly familiar. Unease followed—this existential stuff was so not her. “His rescue by an angel was enough to make him a saint?” ever-practical Traci asked. “Unofficially. The Welsh named him one, and eventually it became a fait accompli. Now, please follow me.” The tour guide stepped toward a side door. Katy let the others pass and approached the knight covered in chainmail and other medieval-looking doodads. Only his face peeked out from a tight-fitting, chainmail hoodie-thing. One hand gripped a shield, the other, a sword. She touched his straight nose, the marble a cool kiss against her finger. So. This person had lived about seven hundred years ago. His angular features were starkly masculine. Probably had women admiring them in the flesh. Had he loved? An odd…void bloomed within, tugging at her, as if it were the absence of a feeling seeking wholeness. Evidence of past lives frozen in time always made her feel…disconnected. Disconnected and disturbed. Unable to grasp some larger meaning. Especially since Isabelle was in the past now too, instead of here as her maid of honor. She traced along the knight’s torso, the bumps from the carved chainmail teasing her fingers. “The tour group is getting on the bus. Hurry.” Traci’s voice came from the door. “Coming.” One last glance at her knight. Katy ran a finger down his strong nose again. “Bye,” she whispered.