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It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness. – SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It
My family. They, after all, unconsciously provided a lot of the material and helped me considerably during the writing of the book by arguing ferociously and rarely agreeing about any incident on which I consulted them. My wife, who pleased me by laughing uproariously when reading the manuscript, only to inform me that it was my spelling that amused her.
olive groves where the pitted trunks made a hundred astonished faces at us out of the gloom of their own shadow,
The cypress trees undulated gently in the breeze, as if they were busily painting the sky a still brighter blue for our arrival.
Gradually the magic of the island settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen. Each day had a tranquillity, a timelessness, about it, so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of night would peel off and there would be
a fresh day waiting for us, glossy and colourful as a child’s transfer and with the same tinge of unreality.
He would surge down the path and onto the rug with an expression of bemused good humour on his face. He would pause, survey you thoughtfully, and then choose a portion of your anatomy on which to practise mountaineering.
If I remember rightly, we were involved in the Herculean task of discovering how long it would take six men to build a wall if three of them took a week. I seem to recall that we have spent almost as much time on this problem as the men spent on the wall.
Across the mouth of the bay a sun-bleached boat would pass, rowed by a brown fisherman in tattered trousers, standing in the stern and twisting an oar in the water like a fish’s tail. He would raise one hand in lazy salute, and across the still, blue water you could hear the plaintive squeak of the oar as it twisted, and the soft clop as it dug into the sea.
Theodore had an apparently inexhaustible fund of knowledge about everything, but he imparted this knowledge with a sort of meticulous diffidence that made you feel he was not so much teaching you something new as reminding you of something which you were already aware of, but which had, for some reason or other, slipped your mind.
moon rose higher and higher, turning to pink, then gold, and finally riding in a nest of stars, like a silver bubble.
We could even see the luminous trails beneath the surface where the porpoises swam in fiery patterns across the sandy bottom, and when they leaped high in the air the drops of emerald glowing water flicked from them, and you could not tell if it was phosphorescence or fireflies you were looking at.
lying like fallen moons among the contorted rocks.
But it was a changed wind, a mad, hooting, bellowing wind that leaped down on the island and tried to blow it into the sea. The blue sky vanished as a cloak of fine grey cloud was thrown over the island.
‘they say that when you get old, as I am, your body slows down. I don’t believe it. No, I think that is quite wrong. I have a theory that you do not slow down at all, but that life slows down for you.
The tiny ripples sped over the moonlit sea and breathed with relief as they reached the shore at last.
As casually as I could I
asked him what his name was, and why he was in prison. He smiled charmingly over his shoulder. ‘My name’s Kosti,’ he said, ‘Kosti Panopoulos. I killed my wife.’
the talk mounted into a crescendo.
Larry’s eye had now achieved sunset hues which could only have been captured by the brush of Turner.
The warm air, the wine, and the melancholy beauty of the night filled me with a delicious sadness. It would always be like this, I thought.
Behold, the Heavens do open, the Gods look down and the unnatural scene they laugh at. – SHAKESPEARE, Coriolanus
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples for I am sick of love. SONG OF SOLOMON 5
without the dubious benefits of radio or television, we had to rely on such primitive forms of amusement as books, quarrelling, parties, and the laughter of our friends,
