Mountolive
This book is just as good as Balthazar that preceded it in the quadrilogy. It is also the first to tell a thread of the story from a different character's perspective. Really enjoyable. I'm not sure how much this would stand up on its own without reading the first two books so I suggest starting there first.
‘Wait’ she said suddenly. ‘There is a crumb on your lip.’ And leaning forward she took it softly upon her own tongue.
he was learning the two most important lessons in life: to make love honestly and to reflect.
It is odd, isn't it, that for us there was no real war between Cross and Crescent? That was entirely a Western European creation.
You cannot write more than a dozen love-letters without finding yourself gravelled for fresh matter. The richest of human experiences is also the most limited in its range of expression. Words kill love as they kill everything else.
slowly suffocating like a cat in an air-pump.
A snowflake on the eyelash suddenly bursts the world asunder into the gleaming component colours of the prism.
The harmonium in the corner suddenly began to pant like a fat man running for a bus; then it found its voice and gave out a slow nasal rendering of the first two phrases in tones whose harshness across the wintry hush was like the pulling out of entrails.
I just don't see what D. H. Lawrence has to offer a pasha with seventeen wives, though I believe I know which one of them is happiest.
Justine must be awfully good to sleep with, must kiss like a rainbow and squeeze out great sparks – yes.
I am hoping he will offer to put me up as hotels are expensive and I can then spend my travel allowance on drink.
The pavements still retained their heat just as water-melons did when you cut them open at dusk
Reading at meals was another self-indulgence which he could not refuse himself.
‘Care for a drink?’ — ‘Don't mind if I do.’ How many evenings had been lost like this?
‘now I will make you La Veuve’
Andrew Doran
Double entendre par excellence: http://www.alternative-dictionaries.net/dictionary/french/entry/veuve
He turned his mind first this way and then that, like an hourglass; but it was always the same sand which sifted through it, the same questions which followed each other unanswerably at the same leaden pace.
glum as a foetus in a bottle
Andrew Doran
That's a new one on me.
Damien Ryan
File under perfect metaphor.
He had now joined the ranks of those who compromise gracefully with life.
Calamity draws people as an open wound draws flies
I struggle with this myself.