“The brief silence that follows is as tender as arainstorm of daisies.”
“Five tender apricots in a blue bowl, a brief and exact promise of things to come.”
“There was a brief silence. I think I heard snow falling.”
“There was a brief silence in which the distant echo of Hagrid smashing down a wooden front door seemed to reverberate through the intervening years.”
“For this was the round of love: fear which leads on desire, tenderness and fury, and that brutal anguish which triumphantly follows pleasure.”
“A brief rustling that broke off short, as if startled at itself, then deadly silence, that agonising, watchful hush, fraught with its own betrayal, that stretched each minute to an excruciating eternity.”