I shouldn't have too many reversal of fortunes. It's very awkward.

Justine hated pantsuits. Whenever she saw one, she had an urge to tell the owner some scandalous fortune, loudly enough to be heard everywhere: 'The father of your next-to-last baby has run off with a cigar-smoking redhead.

From surfeit to loss is a short line.

The priest then turning toward the bride, inquired:

"Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband, etc., etc., so long as ye both shall live?"

To which the bride, throwing aside her veil, answered, firmly:

"No! Not if he were the last man and I the last woman on the face of the earth and the human race was about to become extinct and the angel of Gabriel came down from above to ask it of me as a personal favor."

The effect of this outburst, this revelation, this explosion, may be imagined but can never be adequately described.

Words were few and failing between them as though the silence that sat with them had laid its old lips on theirs and sucked them dry of speech. For where could one begin? With the weather? But here there was no weather. These few sad rooms were the old man's world. His horizons were all walls.

There was not one straight floor from the foundation to the roof; the ceilings were so fantastically clouded by smoke and dust, that old woman might have told fortunes in them better than in grouts of tea;