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I had a strong urge to step back from them, and an even stronger urge to poke them with a stick.
(Look, if you don’t make a fool of yourself over animals, at least in private, you aren’t to be trusted. That was one of my father’s maxims, and it’s never failed me yet.)
They both had large, liquid eyes, the sort that are called doe-like by poets, although those poets have mostly never hunted deer, because neither of the Ushers had giant elliptical pupils and they both had perfectly serviceable whites.
Very few ancient crypts have plump shepherdesses and gamboling sheep on the walls. I consider this an oversight.
(I am never sure what to think of Americans. Their brashness can be charming, but just when I decide that I rather like them, I meet one that I wish would go back to America, and then perhaps keep going off the far edge, into the sea.)
I offered Denton my hand, because Americans will shake hands with the table if you don’t stop them.
Sometimes it’s hard to know if someone is insulting or just an American.
I’d been tired of it a decade ago. Now I’d moved to some other state entirely. Transcendent exhaustion, perhaps.
“You know I’m not a superstitious soul, Angus, but I swear there’s something wicked here.” “Well, I am a superstitious soul,” said Angus, “and I know there is. It ain’t canny. The sort of place you find devils dancing on the moors.”
It’s less galling to be mistaken for a man than a woman, for some reason. Probably because no one tries to kiss your hand or bar you from the Royal Mycology Society.
She only deigned to speak to me because I was about to poke a mushroom with a stick.”
It was fun. People get hung up on happiness and joy, but fun will take you at least as far and it’s generally cheaper to obtain.
(A Frenchwoman once told me that I had no poetry in my soul. I recited a dirty limerick to her, and she threw a lemon at my head. Paris is a marvelous city.)
I was halfway back to my room before I realized what Maddy’s stilted walk had reminded me of. It was the hare.
His voice had that light veneer of humor that we all get, because if we don’t pretend we’re laughing, we might have to admit just how broken we are.
Denton was even more American than usual. If his accent got any broader, he was going to start singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and shaking hands with the tablecloth.
It is very unpleasant to sit down to a meal when you are trying to determine which one of your breakfast companions is a murderer.
