A Matter of Time Quotes

“What is it?" I asked.
"Rain," she said.
"It's too early for rain."
"That's what you think. Open the door. You'll see."
I turned off the air conditioner so that we could hear better, slid open the glass door -- and the soft thunder of rain falling onto sand curtained us in. Deaf, we would still have known it was raining: smell would have told us; the smell of dry earth watered, of dehydrated vegetation reconstituted, the smell of resurrection. The first rain in a dry land! It smells better than lilies in July, or the ocean, or the wind in sun-warmed pines, or the irrigated patch of alfalfa you reach after a long haul through dry hills. It is hard to smell that sweetness and believe in death.”
― Jessamyn West, A Matter of Time

“The prophetic sparkle of autumn. . . .invested the water and air of Balboa next morning. The inland garden softness of the night before was gone. The bay was still blue, and the wind-blown watery ridges looked sharp enough to draw blood. The sand glittered with minute glassy igloos.”
― Jessamyn West, A Matter of Time

“No one was ever more content with her physical equipment than I. I could run fast, kick high, sing loud; I breathed with excitement, ate with gusto, could smell fog, feel the movement of air when it was scarcely moving, and see in our sunsets, red and black like burning sump holes, some grandeur way beyond the fact of color and the earth's turning. The physical equipment that I had, and knew I had, kept me so occupied I had no time to speculate about what I might be missing.”
― Jessamyn West, A Matter of Time