“Those nights when the future seemed to last only till the morning and he would count off the hours, one by one, by the chimes of distant church bells.”

“Came the visions of icy beauty,from the land of death where they dwell.Pursuing their prize and grisly duty,came the thieves of the charm and spell.The bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling. Alluring of shape though seldom seen,they traveled the breeze on a spark.some fed twigs to their newborn queen,while others invaded the dark.the bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling.some they called and others they kissedas they traveled on river and wave.with resolve they came and did insist:every one touched to a grave.the bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling.roving to hunt and gathering to dance,they practiced their dark desiresby casting a hex and a beautiful trance,before feeding the queen's new fires.the bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling.till he parted the fallsand the bells chimed thrice,till he issued the callsand demanded the price.the bells chimed thrice and death met the mountain.they charmed and embracedand they tried to extollbut he bade them in graceand demanded a soul.the bells fell silent and the mountain slew them all.and the mountain entombed them all.”

“She knows what it means. Oh, wonderfully bright at 6 a.m., yes, wonderfully clear for an hour. But the shorter the days, the longer the nights, the darker the house, the easier it is, the easier it is, the easier it is, to mistake a shadow for the writing on the wall, the sound of overland footsteps for the distant crack of thunder, and the midnight chime of a New Year clock for the bell that tolls the end of the world.”

“Somewhere in the garden a nightingale was singing, and a little breeze touched her hair and stirred the leaves overhead. All the different bells of the city chimed, once each, this one high, that one low, some close by, others farther off, one cracked and peevish, another grave and sonorous, but agreeing in all their different voices on what the time was, even if some of them got to it a little more slowly than others. In that other Oxford where she and Will had kissed good-bye, the bells would be chiming, too, and a nightingale would be singing, and a little breeze would be stirring the leaves in the Botanic Garden...”

“His action of joining them, which would have been rude in a restaurant that was not moving at three hundred kilometers an hour, was perfectly acceptable on a train, which mimicked the entirely random joinings of life but revealed their true nature by making them last only hours or days, rather than years and decades. People on a train form an alliance, as if the world that surrounded the parallel rails were hostile and and they refugees from it. The dining car, humming and rocking gently in the night, annihilated past and future and made all associations outside of itself seem vaguely unreal. So they welcomed him at their table, for he was one of them, a traveler, not one of those wraiths through whose night-lit cities they passed.”

“Tonight, I feel small. An entire night in the city seems to be too much for me, too immense for me to get lost in. By now it's past one, the after-hours city is in full swing, and morning is a long way off.”