“Even sound seemed to fail in this air, like the air was worn out with carrying sounds so long.”

“Though the mules plod in a steady and unflagging hypnosis, the vehicle does not seem to progress. It seems to hang suspended in the middle distance forever and forever, so infinitesimal is its progress, like a shabby bead upon the mild red string of road. So much so is this that in the watching of it the eye loses it as sight and sense drowsily merge and blend, like the road itself, with all the peaceful and monotonous changes between darkness and day, like already measured thread being rewound onto a spool. So that at last, as though out of some trivial and unimportant region beyond even distance, the sound of it seems to come slow and terrific and without meaning, as though it were a ghost traveling a half mile ahead of its own shape.”

“Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar...”

“I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off.”

“...only the peak feels so sound and stable that the beginning of the falling is hidden for a little while...”

“...like old married people who no longer have anything in common, to do or to talk about, save the same general weight of air to displace and breathe and general oblivious biding earth to bear their weight...”

“How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound,the weary gestures wearily recapitulant:echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string:in sunset we fall into furious attitudes,dead gestures of dolls.”