I decided to see no more of the clerk until the processing of my papers was completed.

This is the most delightful trial I have ever had '', she decided.

I decided I hated the Pedersen kid too, dying in our kitchen while I was away where I couldn't watch, dying just to entertain Hans and making me go up snapping steps and down a drafty hall, Pa lumped under the covers at the end like dung covered with snow, snoring and whistling.

I don't think he'd mind too much if he were sure you'd decided not to be a rumdum in the future ''.

I saw that I would soon run out of buildings at this rate, so I decided to take another measure -- the whole state of Pennsylvania.

Then Via called to say they had decided to cremate her -- as they had Ellen, the thought leaped to my mind -- and did I want to meet her at the funeral home the next morning.

I decided thirty-five was the best estimate of her age.

But I smelled the coffee, and thinking, What the hell, live dangerously, I decided I would scald my worries away.

But that was only natural, I decided ; ;

I wanted to slap his face, to wipe forever the insolence and brutal glee from his mouth, and I decided then, very suddenly, what I would do.

' Originally, it was used to cure illness and the ' thing ' was the illness, but I decided to make it the ' thing ' as in the person standing in front of me.

" I decided that was for me.

In 1824, Disraeli toured Belgium and the Rhine Valley with his father and later wrote that it was while travelling on the Rhine that he decided to abandon the law: " I determined when descending those magical waters that I would not be a lawyer.

Chaplin decided not to re-enter the United States, writing: " Since the end of the last world war, I have been the object of lies and propaganda by powerful reactionary groups who, by their influence and by the aid of America's yellow press, have created an unhealthy atmosphere in which liberal-minded individuals can be singled out and persecuted.

In a 1973 revision of his compendium of essays, Profiles of the Future, Clarke acknowledged the Second Law and proposed the Third in order to round out the number, adding " As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there ".

My God, how long is he going to wait, I thought.

I could observe the two fans down at the end, but their size in themselves meant nothing to me as long as I had no measure of comparison.

I'm well aware that you've got a pedigree as long as my leg, and that I don't amount to anything.

How long should I wait ''??

Rod shifted his eager eyes from the milling group out in the circle long enough to reply, `` I ain't much of a hand for Dare-Base and Farmer-in-the-Dell, but I'd sure like to get in on the handhold and wrestles ''.

Gracias '', I hollered, my first long swallow filling me with confidence and immediately doubling the size of my Spanish vocabulary.

My new Aunt was perhaps three or four years older than I and it had been a long time since I had seen as gorgeous a woman who oozed sex.

Our lifeboat was filling rapidly and despite what I had heard of the inhabitants of Eromonga, I was glad to see a long and graceful outrigger manned by three bronzed girls glide out of a lagoon into the open sea and toward our craft.

Anyway, I wasn't down long enough to matter.

When I mentioned that for my first long voyage I did not even have the money for the return fare, but had trusted to luck that I would earn a sufficient amount, the young people looked at me doubtingly.

And so I would only touch upon it now ( much as I have long wanted to write a book about it ).

I have more than once sat cross-legged in the grass through a long summer morning and watched without touching while a poppy bud higher than my head slowly but visibly pushed off its cap, unfolded, and shook out like a banner in the sun its flaming vermilion petals.

I was having lunch not long ago ( apologies to N. V. Peale ) with three distinguished historians ( one specializing in the European Middle Ages, one in American history, and one in the Far East ), and I asked them if they could name instances where the general mores had been radically changed with `` deliberate speed, majestic instancy '' ( Francis Thompson's words for the Hound Of Heaven's Pursuit ) by judicial fiat.

A dear, respected friend of mine, who like myself grew up in the South and has spent many years in New England, said to me not long ago: `` I can't forgive New England for rejecting all complicity ''.

Here Wright gave a slight sigh of weariness, and continued, `` It means more long years lived across the social grain of the life of our people, making shift to live in the face of popular disrespect and misunderstanding as I best can for myself and those dependent upon me ''.

I had long since begun to lose my general innocence when I lost my trust in you, but this special innocence I lost before ever I loved, through my discovery that one could tremble with desire and even experience a flaming delight that had nothing, nothing whatever to do with friendship or liking, let alone with love.

Sometimes I wondered vaguely what he did about women for my Aunt, by blood, had died some years ago, but neither of us said anything.

I was puzzled by the remark, then I recalled the voice of mild Professor Howard Griggs three years ago in a university lecture on primitive societies.

Hell, I gave him the first decent job he ever had, six, seven -- how many years ago was it, Rob ''??

I leave it to the statisticians to say what they were, but I noticed several a few years ago, during an automobile ride from Memphis to Hattiesburg.

Some fourteen or fifteen years ago, in an essay I called The Leader Follows -- Where??

The myth of the Southern plantation has had only a tangential relation with actuality, as Francis Pendleton Gaines showed forty years ago, and I suspect it has had a far narrower acceptance as something real than has generally been supposed.

It would be profitable, I believe, to read these realistic humorists alongside Faulkner's works, the thought being not that he necessarily read them and owed anything to them directly, but rather that they dealt a hundred years ago with a class of people and a type of life which have continued down to our time, to Faulkner's time.

A year ago, when I met with you, the nation was emerging from an economic downturn, even though the signs of resurgent prosperity were not then sufficiently convincing to the doubtful.

Once many years ago I sat at dinner next to Arthur Train, and the subject of The Nation came up.

Several years ago I was his pastor.

A few weeks ago, I read in the Bulletin that there were to be given Chinese classes in Cranston.

I was surprised at Mayor Miriani's defeat, but perhaps Mayor-elect Cavanagh can accomplish some things that should have been done years ago.

But it seems that pressures against him are coming from somewhere -- in the first place from China, but perhaps also from that `` China Lobby '' which, I was assured in Moscow nearly two years ago, exists on the quiet inside the party.

A hundred years ago I would have worn a beard with pride.

I myself was one of the skeptics ( 35 years ago ).

`` I seem to remember '', he said, `` that in an interview ten years ago you gave humor and comedy five years to live.

`` Oh yes, the other day I reread some of Emerson's English Traits, and there was an anecdote about a group of English and Americans visiting Germany, more than a hundred years ago.

I wrote a few years ago that one of the cardinal rules of writing is that the reader should be able to get some idea of what the story is about.

Not long ago, I rode down with him in an elevator in Radio City ; ;

Private George Gray Hunter of Pennsylvania wrote: `` I am well convinced in my own mind that had it not been for officers this war would have ended long ago ''.