The Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength

by C.S. Lewis

month of inactivity, a heavy meal and an unknown world do not help a man to run.

Lewis is so good at chapter openings. Big fan.

Nothing could be more disgusting than the one impression; nothing more delightful than the other. It all depended on the point of view.

“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hmn, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing.

“And indeed,” he continued, “the poem is a good example. For the most splendid line becomes fully splendid only by means of all the lines after it; if you went back to it you would find it less splendid than you thought. You would kill it. I mean in a good poem.”

I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.

But eldila are hard to see. They are not like us. Light goes through them. You must be looking in the right place and the right time; and that is not likely to come about unless the eldil wishes to be seen. Sometimes you can mistake them for a sunbeam or even a moving of the leaves; but when you look again you see that it was an eldil and that it is gone.

We are all a bent race.