Lenox Quotes

‎He often envied people who hadn't read his favourite books. They had such happiness before them.

Her strength was in the integrity of her actions; she never compromised what she believed she ought to do.

Trains are relentless things, aren't they, Monsieur Poirot? People are murdered and die, but they go on just the same. I am talking nonsense, but you know what I mean." "Yes, yes, I know. Life is like a train, Mademoiselle. It goes on. And it is a good thing that that is so." "Why?" "Because the train gets to its journey's end at last, and there is a proverb about that in your language, Mademoiselle." "'Journey's end in lovers meeting.'" Lenox laughed. "That is not going to be true for me." "Yes--yes, it is true. You are young, younger than you yourself know. Trust the train, Mademoiselle, for it is le bon Dieu who drives it." The whistle of the engine came again. "Trust the train, Mademoiselle," murmured Poirot again. "And trust Hercule Poirot. He knows.

‎'He often envied people who hadn't read his favourite books. They had such happiness before them.

...It had been a perfect nap -- the sort a man runs into now and again by chance...

Are you going to give a speech?' she asked gaily. He gave a choked laugh. 'Of course not,' he said. 'Not for ages.' 'My cousin Davey gave one on his very first day!' ... 'In the Lords, I remember. It was about how he didn't like strawberry jam.' 'Be nice, Charles! It was a speech about fruit importation, which I admit devolved into something of a tirade.' She couldn't help but laugh. 'Still, you could talk about something more important.' 'Than jam? Impossible. We mustn't set the bar too high, Jane.

Great events make me quiet and calm—it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.

The hardest part of losing a person, Charles, is that grief is only an absence. There is nowhere to go to touch it.

...men lived and died all the time by the peculiarities of their soul, which they could never expect one another to understand.

Would it help to break something else?' She was breathing hard. 'Maybe.' Darlington rose and opened a cupboard, then another, and another, revealing shelf after shelf of Lenox, Waterford, Limoges-glassware, plates, pitchers, platters, butter dishes, gravy boats, thousands of dollar's worth of crystal and china. He took down a glass, filled it with wine, and handed it to Alex. 'Where would you like to start?

the boredom of childhood is different, richer and more special than the boredom of adulthood,

How many paths had I avoided in life? How many times had I been content to stop at "close enough"--too afraid to push ahead? Too afraid to let go? Too afraid to give up . . . control.

Yes, yes, I know. Life is like a train, Mademoiselle. It goes on. And it is a good thing that that is so.” “Why?” “Because the train gets to its journey’s end at last, and there is a proverb about that in your language, Mademoiselle.” “ ‘Journeys end in lovers meeting.’ ” Lenox laughed. “That is not going to be true for me.” “Yes—yes, it is true. You are young, younger than you yourself know. Trust the train, Mademoiselle, for it is le bon Dieu who drives it.

I've had my wild times now and then — more than my share perhaps — and I don't think I'll give them up, because I like them too well.

Sunsets are a reminder that every day will come to an end. And no matter how hard, or how trying, or how all-consuming that twenty-four-hour period might feel...every day can be as different as every sunset.

Our civilization overflows with charity—which is simply willingness to hand back to labor as generous gracious alms a small part of the loot from the just wages of labor. But of real help—just wages for honest labor—there is little, for real help would disarrange the system, would abolish the upper classes. She

In a way it was the same impulse as wishing to be a detective: to know everything; to understand everything; to experience everything.

Love is more than flirty feelings and fun dates. It's about what lives underneath the surface. The commitment you keep even when life gets hard and all the fuzzy feelings fade.

Summer had so much drive, so much ambition, but when she started focusing too much on what lay ahead, she missed out on everything that was right in front of her.

Only when a good thing happens to be cheap is a cheap thing good.

It's impossible to love someone and never feel pain. They're a packaged deal. But when you're committed to loving someone--you figure out how to work through the hard times.

Maybe the problem is that a woman doesn’t need to be conquered, Your Majesty. Maybe she needs to be won.

I felt it anew--the tireless tether that had bound us to one another since childhood. Clementine, my big sister, and the North Star to my wandering soul.

Our connection to art has less to do with talent and more to do with the emotion it stirs inside us. And perhaps our willingness to feel that emotion.

the most unrepentantly unfaithful husband in Parliament (not a contest with light competition). It was clear that Mrs.

There was a smile upon his face, that mostly happy but slightly sad smile people have when they go back to a place they have loved.

Suddenly Dallington burst into speech. 'Listen, Lenox - I want to apologize...' Lenox waved a dismissive hand. 'You're young,' he said. 'There are many lessons before you, some harder than this one... All too often things are blurry, though, John. It's the way of the world. Humans are blurry creatures,

That’s what life is all about. The obvious. The minute we start layering it with shades of grey, we start getting caught in quicksand.

Falling in love with you was not happenstance

When you're committed to loving someone...you figure out how to work through the hard times.

Churches are full of sinners, not saints,

After a long moment, he said, “Would it help to break something else?” She was breathing hard. “Maybe.” Darlington rose and opened a cupboard, then another, and another, revealing shelf after shelf of Lenox, Waterford, Limoges—glassware, plates, pitchers, platters, butter dishes, gravy boats, thousands of dollars’ worth of crystal and china. He took down a glass, filled it with wine, and handed it to Alex. “Where would you like to start?

The Bodleian above anything else made Oxford what it was . . . There was something incommunicably grand about it, something difficult to understand unless you had spent your evenings there or walked past it on the way to celebrate the boat race, a magic that came from ignoring it a thousand times a day and then noticing its overwhelming beauty when you came out of a tiny alley and it caught you unexpectedly. A library--it didn't sound like much, but it was what made Oxford itself. The greatest library in the world.

Oh, Lawd, I done forgot Harlem! Say, you colored folks, hungry a long time in 135th Street--they got swell music at the Waldorf-Astoria. It sure is a mighty nice place to shake hips in, too. There's dancing after supper in a big warm room. It's cold as hell on Lenox Avenue. All you've had all day is a cup of coffee. Your pawnshop overcoat's a ragged banner on your hungry frame. You know, downtown folks are just crazy about Paul Robeson! Maybe they'll like you, too, black mob from Harlem. Drop in at the Waldorf this afternoon for tea. Stay to dinner. Give Park Avenue a lot of darkie color--free for nothing!

I feels evil myself when I sees a white cop talking smart to a colored woman, like I did the other day. A middle-aged brownskin lady had run through a red light on Lenox Avenue by accident, and this cop were glaring at her as if she had committed some kind of major crime. He was asking her what did she think the streets was for, to use for a speedway--as if twenty miles an hour were speeding. So I says to the cop, 'Would you talk that way to your mama?' "He ignored me. And as good luck would have it, he did not know I had put him in the dozens. Bu that time quite a crowd had gathered around. When he saw all them black faces, he lowered his voice, in fact shut up altogether, and just wrote that old lady a ticket, since he did not see any colored cops nearby to call to protect him.

I took my solo and beat hell out of the skins. Then Spoof swiped at his mouth and let go with a blast and moved it up into that squeal and stopped and started playing. It was all headwork. All new to us. New to anybody. I saw Sonny get a look on his face, and we sat still and listened while Spoof made love to that horn. Now like a scream, now like a laugh - now we're swinging in the trees, now the white men are coming, now we're in the boat and chains are hanging from our ankles and we're rowing, rowing - Spoof, what is it? - now we're sawing wood and picking cotton and serving up those cool cool drinks to the Colonel in his chair - Well, blow, man! - now we're free, and we're struttin' down Lenox Avenue and State & Madison and Pirate's Alley, laughing, crying - Who said free? - and we want to go back and we don't want to go back - Play it, Spoof! God, God, tell us all about it! Talk to us! - and we're sitting in a cellar with a comb wrapped up in paper, with a skin-barrel and a tinklebox - Don't stop, Spoof! Oh Lord, please don't stop! - and we're making something, something, what is it? Is it jazz? Why, yes, Lord, it's jazz. Thank you, sir, and thank you, sir, we finally got it, something that is ours, something great that belongs to us and to us alone, that we made, and that's why it's important and that's what it's all about and - Spoof! Spoof, you can;t stop now -- But it was over, middle of the trip. And there was Spoof standing there facing us and tears streaming out of those eyes and down over that coaldust face, and his body shaking and shaking. It's the first we ever saw that. It's the first we ever heard him cough, too - like a shotgun going off every two seconds, big raking sounds that tore up from the bottom of his belly and spilled out wet and loud. ("Black Country")

Now the moment had arrived. Birgit took her place beside him in the command car. She pulled up her large striped cotton dirndl skirt made by her fellow national, Katya of Sweden, and looked around with an excited smile. But to onlookers it was more like the strained expression of a Swedish farm woman in a Swedish outhouse in the dead of a Swedish winter. She was trying to restrain her excitement at the sight of all those naked limbs in the amber light. From the shoulders up she had the delicate neckline and face of a Nordic goddess, but below her body was breastless, lumpy with bulging hips and huge round legs like sawed-off telegraph posts. She felt elated, sitting there with her man who was leading these colored people in this march for their rights. She loved colored people. Her eyeblue eyes gleamed with this love. When she looked at the white cops her lips curled with scorn. A number of police cruisers had appeared at the moment the march was to begin. They stared at the white woman and the colored man in the command car. Their lips compressed but they said nothing, did nothing. Marcus had got a police permit. The marchers lined up four abreast on the right side of the street, facing west. The command car was at the lead. Two police cars brought up the rear. Three were parked at intervals down the street as far as the railroad station. Several others cruised slowly in the westbound traffic, turned north at Lenox Avenue, east again on 126th Street, back to 125th Street on Second Avenue and retraced the route. The chief inspector had said he didn’t want any trouble in Harlem. “Squads, MARCH!” Marcus shouted over the amplifier.

With Mary standing in the hall, Kate and Anthony exited out the doorway and headed west on Milner Street. “I usually stay to the smaller streets and make my way up to Brompton Road,” Kate explained, thinking that he might not be very familiar with this area of town, “then take that to Hyde Park. But we can walk straight up Sloane Street, if you prefer.” “Whatever you wish,” he demurred. “I shall follow your direction.” “Very well,” Kate replied, marching determinedly up Milner Street toward Lenox Gardens. Maybe if she kept her eyes ahead of her and moved briskly, he’d be discouraged from conversation. Her daily walks with Newton were supposed to be her time for personal reflection. She did not appreciate having to drag him along. Her strategy worked quite well for several minutes. They walked in silence all the way to the corner of Hans Crescent and Brompton Road, and then he quite suddenly said, “My brother played us for fools last night.” That stopped her in her tracks. “I beg your pardon?” “Do you know what he told me about you before he introduced us?” Kate stumbled a step before shaking her head, no. Newton hadn’t stopped in his tracks, and he was tugging on the lead like mad. “He told me you couldn’t say enough about me.” “Wellll,” Kate stalled, “if one doesn’t want to put too fine a point on it, that’s not entirely untrue.” “He implied,” Anthony added, “that you could not say enough good about me.” She shouldn’t have smiled. “That’s not true.” He probably shouldn’t have smiled, either, but Kate was glad he did. “I didn’t think so,” he replied. They turned up Brompton Road toward Knightsbridge and Hyde Park, and Kate asked, “Why would he do such a thing?” Anthony shot her a sideways look. “You don’t have a brother, do you?” “No, just Edwina, I’m afraid, and she’s decidedly female.” “He did it,” Anthony explained, “purely to torture me.” “A noble pursuit,” Kate said under her breath. “I heard that.” “I rather thought you would,” she added. “And I expect,” he continued, “that he wanted to torture you as well.” “Me?” she exclaimed. “Whyever? What could I possibly have done to him?” “You might have provoked him ever so slightly by denigrating his beloved brother,” he suggested. Her brows arched. “Beloved?” “Much-admired?” he tried. She shook her head. “That one doesn’t wash, either.” Anthony grinned.

She knew about bundling up against the wicked cold. She knew about Paradise Plums—hard, oval candies, cherry-red on one side, pineapple-yellow on the other. She knew which West Indian markets along Lenox Avenue carried them in tilt-back glass jars on the countertops. She knew how desirable Paradise Plums were to sweet-starved little children, and how important in maintaining discipline on long shopping journeys. She knew exactly how many of the imported goodies could be sucked and rolled around in the mouth before the wicked gum arabic with its acidic british teeth cut through the tongue’s pink coat and raised little red pimples.

Why, at the coldest time of year, did they return to the warm parts of each other, the parts they could forget in the haste and noise so much of the time, when they were lesser friends, lesser brothers, lesser partners to each other? What spirit made this room so happy? It was a mystery; a mystery beyond even the ken of a very great detective.

She was a pretty and lovable but perhaps not a beautiful woman, with wide, intelligent, peaceful eyes and a smiling mouth that ran pink and red depending on the weather. She rarely dressed inside the fashion, yet always managed to look fashionable, and while there were those in London society who condemned her curling, unostentatious hair as dull, there were others who thought it her best asset. Lenox, of course, stood with this latter group.

That’s correct, Mr. Lenox, you’re correct. You see, in the first place, I wouldn’t want to go to the police. But in the second place, I think the police would have laughed. I know you won’t laugh.

Mr. Lenox, have you heard of a man of Ludovic Starling’s age and position becoming a baron out of the blue? It was the purest fantasy.

Beyond all that, it was a tremendous thing to have him in the house. It meant that Lenox was a serious participant in the grand game of London politics, someone on the move. Disraeli wasn’t any longer a very sociable fellow; his visit here would be on people’s lips the next morning.

Really, this infernal and constant intrusion into official matters of the Yard cannot stand a moment longer! Good Lord, Mr. Lenox, do you have no sense of boundary? Of decorum? Of—

Against all odds he had since then picked up a great deal of Lenox’s knowledge and even, in the business of the September Society, saved Lenox’s life. He still drank and caroused now and then—it was troubling—but in the midst of their cases together his conduct had been largely faultless.

More significantly, why on earth had he claimed that his wife wanted Lenox on the case so badly when it was plain she had no idea he was in town?

Because of his work Lenox had seen so many grieving people in the last two decades that he was, to his shame, in some degree immune to their suffering. It was no different with Mrs. Clarke; he sympathized with her, but the rawness of her emotions—he could now feel detached from it. Inwardly he vowed to discover who had killed Freddie, if only to make amends for this own private callousness.

Do you have children, Mr. Lenox?” “I don’t.” “They’re mysterious creatures. You do your best with them, but in the end it’s not up to you how they live.

On the walk home, Lenox wondered if he himself felt as secure. It had been a jarring, horrifying moment, and the sight of that silver blade had raised every animal instinct in him to flee.

Suddenly Lenox understood the cost to his pupil of this occupation: dismissed for so long because he didn’t work, because he drank and played, and now dismissed because he did work.

This was the woman Lenox was to marry, whose counsel he valued above any other, and who was to his spirit both sun and moon, midnight and noon.

He was also, Lenox felt with complete certainty, the most dangerous man in London.

The vast majority of parliamentary campaigns were self-funded or else funded by powerful local interests. Lenox was happy to lay out his own money, as his father and brother had.

I’ve always thought a man ought to believe in something, Mr. Lenox, and if he believes in something he ought to support

Will you come in, Mr. Lenox? Business has been going well, but I always enjoyed our work together. Thank you for the silver rattle you sent after Emily was born.

The two men, each unhappy in his own way—Lenox to be out of London and because of Lady Jane’s worries, McConnell for more profound and sorrowful reasons—sat for another moment and spoke. Then McConnell stood up and said he’d better pack.

Lenox almost laughed. Saved at the last by Barnard’s snobbishness; saved at the last by Barnard’s insecurity about his own tenuous relations to the upper class of his nation. It was remarkable how a brilliant mind could in one aspect have been so blind.

There was one thing that pleased Lenox in a small way; Exeter had been right. Hiram Smalls and Gerald Poole had murdered Simon Pierce and Winston Carruthers. It was a vindication. Was it for this, though, that he had died? Or had he discovered something else?

It hangs together, I suppose,” said Jenkins, “but most importantly, Lenox, I don’t understand what Barnard’s motive for all this mayhem might have been.

It had been the catastrophic mistake of his life. Work had given him purpose and identity; left to his own devices, to the endless hours of an unoccupied day, he had begun to collapse inward. Now he only practiced when he helped Lenox. Because of the doctor’s state, however, Lenox felt less confident in the man than usual.

Lenox loved his work dearly and felt it was noble indeed; nevertheless, ignoble though it was, part of him yearned for the comfortable respect of being a Member of Parliament

Lenox thought again that this was as persuasive as Dallington’s fervent advocacy of Gerald Poole, in its way.

Lenox was grateful to Crook for trying to lighten his mood, but butterflies still stirred in his belly and anxiety for Exeter, the fool, in his mind.

don’t know that you’ve quite grasped the nature of people’s lives here, Mr. Lenox. School is a luxury, in many of their cases.

Lieutenant Carrow has always struck me as a cold fish. An able officer, exceedingly able, but not endowed too plentifully with warmth or happiness.

The definite clues he had—the penknife, the medallion, the strange nature of Halifax’s wounds—seemed to point in every different direction.

Of course!” said Lenox. “An officer is murdered and mutiny against the officers of the middle watch—they may well be linked, yes.

stood. “This trip has been a curse. Shot rolled aboard my Lucy! Never once did it happen in the Indias, and now we’re four days from Plymouth Harbor and it does. Well, I must be on deck.

But what if all that counted for nothing, and it was some madman from below deck who had killed Halifax and now was trying to mount a mutiny?

No, of course not. But the officers are also private, insular. I doubt they will have expressed their anxieties or their grief to you.

He perceived that it would be dangerous to offer his nephew any sort of aid or comfort that might interfere with his progress on the ship, however kindly intended it might be.

On shore they would have had six weeks to do the job. The ship is in effect a closed room. Impossible to flee, should you be discovered. It’s peculiar, I’ll say that. Did you take many new men on board for this voyage? Someone who might be violent?

Indeed, what had been the point of all this? It was hard to imagine a life more comfortable than Oates’s; he lacked a wife but he had friends and family, a decent job of good work. Men like Wells, men of ambition, Lenox could understand their turning to crime. But Oates?

Lenox had been deeply suspicious at first, but within a matter of months the young man—neither as pure at heart as Lenox would have wished, nor the wastrel his reputation would have had one believe—had saved his mentor’s life and helped to solve the detective’s thorniest case in years.

Nevertheless, it would appear that one of your number, I doubt more than one, is unhappy. This person is a cancer within us, which I plan to excise as surely as Mr. Tradescant would excise a tumor from any of

How did these men tolerate lives at sea, always abroad, always a thousand miles from home! But then, perhaps they weren’t as happy by their hearths as he was by his.

If we are to catch him out, it will take tremendous craft on our parts, Mr. Billings. I don’t want you flying off half-cocked and confronting him on your own. I suggest we congregate tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. Then you will know.

Lenox had been to the Rookery on cases. It was no place to be caught even in broad daylight: narrow streets with tenements on either side; a foul smell mixed with sulfurous coal of people who couldn’t wash and lived close together; prostitutes in threadbare dresses laughing ostentatiously and offering their business, while they sipped penny pints of gin; gangs of children roaming here and there, picking pockets

Lenox’s blood chilled. He understood very little of what Butler was saying, but here was tangible proof of what they had known from the start: that this Society was capable of murder.

A picture was forming in Lenox’s mind of Dabney’s character. Solid, proud, middle class, and above all intelligent— that was the part of his personality that everybody from Hatch to Stamp had mentioned.

Ashen and dismayed, one of his two best friends recently dead, he seemed worlds away from the jovial and high-spirited young man Lenox had met in Lincoln’s Grove Quad less than a week ago. There was no fight in him—at the moment, anyway

What I cannot forgive myself for is letting him leave when I met him at Lincoln College, Mr. Lenox. I keep repeating the scene in my mind, and it’s beyond my comprehension that I could have let my poor George walk away from my embrace when he looked so pale,

few minutes later they parted. Lenox thought of her, all alone over the past days with the terrible secret of her love and its defeat, aching to help, unequipped by her upbringing or her experience in the world to cope with her emotions. And felt at once a great pity for and admiration of her.

The only thing that seemed clear was that if Lysander was a criminal, he was an exceptionally level-headed one, exceptionally cool. There was little emotion in him. If he was a criminal, Lenox knew, and shuddered to think it, he would be capable of nearly anything.

A captain murdered on his own vessel,” said Tradescant, shaking his head. “It’s hard to know what to believe in.

Lenox poured another glass of water, and realized, as he took a deep breath, what a thrill was running through him. He had finally found his old form. It had come too late to save Martin, but there might be justice. That was something.

dangerous man. I have seen it before.” Lenox coughed then, and his lungs and throat burned, but he went on. “Capable of maintaining a professional life and obeying a private devil simultaneously.

Have you noticed, Mr. Lenox, the intense moral pressure that a village feels it has the right to bring to bear upon any of its members? That

Yes, yes, I know. Life is like a train, Mademoiselle. It goes on. And it is a good thing that that is so.” “Why?” “Because the train gets to its journey’s end at last, and there is a proverb about that in your language, Mademoiselle.” “‘Journeys end in lovers meeting.’” Lenox laughed. “That is not going to be true for me.” “Yes—yes, it is true. You are young, younger than you yourself know. Trust the train, Mademoiselle, for it is le bon Dieu who drives it.

Grief is carried on a moving current. Sometimes it’s swift and sometimes slow, but it’s never stagnant.’ Because stagnant water doesn’t process. It festers.

Sunsets are a reminder that every day will come to an end. And no matter how hard, or how trying, or how all-consuming that twenty-four-hour period might feel . . . every day can be as different as every sunset.

Figure out what the chaos is, Willa. You won’t be able to find

The Empress Dowager, the man continued, was much distressed, and had given orders to stop the fighting; the Boxers were fools... Then the soldier waved a farewell, and retreated cautiously, picking his way back through the ruins and débris. Several times he stopped no raised the head of some dead man that lay there, victim to our rifles, and peered at the face to see if it was recognisable. In five days we have accounted for very many killed and wounded, and numbers still lie in the exposed positions where they fell. The disappearing figure of that man was the end to the last clue we came across regarding the meaning of this sudden quiet. The shadows gradually lengthened and night suddenly fell, and around us there was nothing but these strangely silent ruins. There was barricade for barricade, loophole for loophole, and sandbag for sandbag. What has been levelled to the ground by fire has been heaped up once more so that the ruins themselves may bring more ruin! But although we exhausted ourselves with questions, and many of us hoped against hope, the hours sped slowly by and no message came. The Palace, enclosed in its pink walls, had sunk to sleep, or forgotten us - or, perhaps, had even found that there could be no truce. Then midnight came, and as we were preparing, half incredulously, to go to sleep, we truly knew. Crack, crack, went the first shots from some distant barricade, and bang went an answering rifle on our side. Awakened by these echoes, the firing grew naturally and mechanically to the storm of sound we have become so accustomed to, and the short truce was forgotten. It is no use; we must go through to the end.

Most importantly, Bill and I welcomed the arrival of our grandson, Aidan, on June 18, 2016, at Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It was a sunny day with hardly a cloud in the sky—a prediction, perhaps, of his personality. He is the happiest little boy.

Why Superbad Worked Superbad worked because Seth and Evan wrote about exactly what they were experiencing at the time. Evan explains, “At the time, all we knew was that we really wanted to get laid, we weren’t getting laid, and we weren’t supercool.” It pays to write what you know. Seth started doing standup when he was 13 years old. He adds: “That’s something that came from standup comedy. There’s a comic named Darryl Lenox who still performs, who is great. I remember he saw me perform. . . . I would try to mimic other comedians like Steven Wright or Seinfeld, like, ‘What’s the deal with Krazy Glue?’ and he said: ‘Dude, you’re the only person here who could talk about trying to get a hand job for the first time. . . . Talk about that!’” Lessons from Judd Apatow EVAN: “I would say the biggest thing we learned from [Judd] is ‘Don’t keep stuff to yourself.’ You’re surrounded by smart people. Bring them in. Get other people’s opinions. Share it with them. And most importantly, emotion is what matters. It’s an emotional journey. . . .” SETH: “. . . I remember one time we were filming a scene in Knocked Up and improvising, or maybe it was even 40-Year-Old Virgin, and the direction he screamed at us—because he screams direction from another room a lot, which is hilarious—was, ‘Less semen, more emotion!’ I think that is actually a good note to apply across the board.” TIM: “You also mentioned that every character has to have a wound of some kind.” EVAN: “That’s a big Judd-ism.” TF: Judd recommended they read The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri (Evan: “If you’re a writer, 60% of it is useless and 40% of it is gold.”), which Judd said was Woody Allen’s favorite writing book.

Lenox wobbled into consciousness late the next morning, first barely aware he was there, then aware that it was unpleasant to be there, then finally awake enough to realize that he was awake.

It was late. Cripes, could suns be this bright? Who allowed that? With intense irritation, he pulled a pillow over his eyes.

I don’t know why anyone thinks looking at the stars is so romantic,” he said. “Have they ever read Greek mythology? It’s all the same story—God sees mortal, God desires mortal, mortal suffers gruesome fate and is rewarded with an eternity of pain in the cosmos.” He shrugged. “You could always make up your own stories.” But she was already shaking her head. “No. Those stories are written in stardust millions of years old. I don’t think I get to change them.” “Then I’m thankful for light pollution,” he said.

He looked at her like a thirsty man gazing on an oasis, trying to decide if it were an illusion brought on by the heat.