This burnt land was an exceedingly wild and desolate region. Judging by the weeds and sprouts, it appeared to have been burnt abou...t two years before. It was covered with charred trunks, either prostrate or standing, which crocked our clothes and hands, and we could not easily have distinguished a bear there by his color. Great shells of trees, sometimes unburnt without, or burnt on one side only, but black within, stood twenty or forty feet high. The fire had run up inside, as in a chimney, leaving the sap-wood. Sometimes we crossed a rocky ravine fifty feet wide, on a fallen trunk; and there were great fields of fire-weed (Epilobium angustifolium) on all sides, the most extensive that I ever saw, which presented great masses of pink. Intermixed with these were blueberry and raspberry bushes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Surely, of all creatures we eat, we are most brutal to snails. Helix optera is dug out of the earth where he has been peacefully e...njoying his summer sleep, cracked like an egg, and eaten raw, presumably alive. Or boiled in oil. Or roasted in the hot ashes of a wood fire.... If God is a snail, Bosch's depictions of Hell are going to look like a vicarage tea-party.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.... From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Gradually I regained my usual composure. I reread Pale Fire more carefully. I liked it better when expecting less. And what was th...at? What was that dim distant music, those vestiges of color in the air? Here and there I discovered in it and especially, especially in the invaluable variants, echoes and spangles of my mind, a long ripplewake of my glory.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It began with begging. In the beginning it was all God's icebox... and everyone ate raw fish or animals and there was no fire at night to dance to, no fire at day to cook by.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »