In the middle of the silence in a writer's house lies an invalid: the book being worked on.

A kind of duet-she as oboe, he as contrabassoon, and full of obbligato digressions.

[He] is a tall, grandly built man; [she] tall and delicate. Both are narrow-faced with long, imperial noses; as they pose for pictures, it is a turkey buzzard sharing companionably with an egret.

A prettiness mummified by years of chalk dust.

This sentimental comedy by the Soviet playwright Aleksei Arbuzov is said to have had a great success in its own country. So do fringed lamp shades.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.