“Now time, afternoon time, which in the Midi is as elemental as air and light, expanded and rolled billowingly outwards across the rest of the day, and upwards to the vaults of the cobalt sky, freeing everyone in its delicious sprawl from their obligations.”

“She glanced upwards for a second at the soft blue vault of the midsummer night sky. Not a cloud misted its solemn depths. Tomorrow would be a beautiful day.”

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”

“It is almost startling to hear this warning of departed time sounding among the tombs, and telling the lapse of the hour, which, like a billow, has rolled us onward towards the grave.”

“Time and space recede and blast away like a universe expanding forever outward, and leaving only darkness and the two of us on its periphery, darkness and breathing and touch.”

“A dirty, joyous, bare-limbed freedom, which rose in his imagination like a vast airy cathedral, ruined perhaps, roofless, fan-vaulted to the skies, where they would weightlessly drift upward in a powerful embrace...”