Opening Words

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.

"In the year 1815 Monseigneur Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of Digne."

Towards the end of November, during a warm spell, at around nine o'clock in the morning, a train of the Petersburg-Warsaw line was approaching Petersburg at full steam.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

It was a fever, a hot rage of words.

While I was still in Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years.

The dying actress arrived in his village the only way one could come directly- in a boat that motored into the cove, lurched past the rock jetty, and bumped against the end of the pier.

The primroses were over.