“The scent of flowers grew stronger and came from all sides; the grass was drenched with dew; a nightingale struck up in a lilac bush close by and then stopped on hearing our voices; the starry sky seemed to come down lower over our heads.”

“The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.”

“A narrow pond would form in the orchard, water clear as air covering grass and black leaves and fallen branches, all around it black leaves and drenched grass and fallen branches, and on it, slight as an image in an eye, sky, clouds, trees, our hovering faces and our cold hands.”

“If onlyit were possible to juicily belch up the lifeone's lived, chew it anew and gulp it down,and then once more to roll it with a fat,ox-like tongue, to squeeze from its eternaldregs the former sweetness of crisp grass,drunk with the morning dew and the bitternessof lilac leaves!”

“I'll give him the good Normal world where we're tethered beside them - blinking our nights away in a non-stop drench of cathode-ray over our shrivelling heads!”

“Far away beyond the pine-woods,' he answered, in a low dreamy voice, 'there is a little garden. There the grass grows long and deep, there are the great white stars of the hemlock flower, there the nightingale sings all night long. All night long he sings, and the cold, crystal moon looks down, and the yew-tree spreads out its giant arms over the sleepers.”