“in a livid wet dress, under the tumbling mist... had run ecstatically up that ridge above Moulinet to be felled there by a thunderbolt.”

“Rain fell in great sheets, hitting the pavement hard enough to send up a blattering, dirty mist. A small man stood on the corner, under the only working streetlamp, and studied the street.”

“it hung above the livid, bruised land like an admonition”

“The shadows of leaves fall upon their arms, as they spread the branches apart, but their shoulders are in the sun. The skin of their arms is like a blue mist, but their shoulders are white and glowing, as if the light fell not from above, but rose from under their skin. We watch the leaf which has fallen upon their shoulder and it lies at the curve of their neck, and a drop of dew glistens upon it like a jewel.”

“Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days.”

“Soon all of you immortalsWill be as dead as we are! Come on then, what are you waiting for?Have you run out of thunderbolts?”