“Half by desipience, half by proclivity, he had come to live in a world where the only significant leisure activities were coupling and consuming. His batrachian lips pursed into a smile, and he dug again into the honey.”

“There was that half-smirk again, playing around his lips, as if he was deciding whether the situation was amusing enough to warrant a full smile.”

“The Middle East, that seductive region where [Herman] Melville had hoped to rekindle his inspiration and revive his diminishing career, had proved an egregious disappointment. "The whole thing is half melancholy, half farcical," he groaned, "like all the rest of the world.”

“His shoulders sagged as he stepped back. Then a half smile made the edge of his lips crook. " You're mad at me.""And that's amusing because?"The half smile spread into a lopsideed grin, and he stood up straighter. "You wouldn't be mad if you didn't care. I'm onto you, Alexis."Oh, that insufferable, arrogant--”

“Again his dead wife came back to his imagination, but not as he had known her for many years, not as the good domestic housewife, but as a young girl with a slim figure, innocently inquiring eyes, and a tight twist of hair on her childish neck. He remembered how he had seen her for the first time. He was still a student then. He had met her on the staircase of his lodgings, and, jostling by accident against her, he tried to apologise, and could only mutter, 'Pardon, monsieur,' while she bowed, smiled, and suddenly seemed frightened, and ran away, though at the bend of the staircase she had glanced rapidly at him, assumed a serious air, and blushed. Afterwards, the first timid visits, the half-words, the half-smiles, and embarrassment; and melancholy, and yearnings, and at last that breathing rapture.... Where had it all vanished? She had been his wife, he had been happy as few on earth are happy.... 'But,' he mused, 'these sweet first moments, why could one not live an eternal, undying life in them?”

“He had learned from experience that what he succeeded in putting down on paper was only ever a pale reflection of what he had imagined, and so he had come to accept that this would only be half as good as the original, half as acceptable as the flawless, unachievable novel that had acted as a guide, and which he imagined pulsating mockingly behind each book like some ghostly presence.”