`` That was a terrible thing to do '', I said to Oso.

`` That quirt -- I ought to use it on you, where it would do the most good.

Having nothing else to do except wait for my forms to be processed, I gave myself over to speculations concerning the hall itself.

As I had expected, he insisted that my visits to the hall would do nothing to further the process of my application.

When I asked him what, if anything, I could do about it, he surprised me by referring me to the director of the hall.

As he lowered himself on the chair behind his desk I wondered what this dapper, slightly ridiculous man could possibly have to do with the workings of the hall.

He said in a studied voice, `` I didn't do it for you.

Don't like to bother no one unless we have to, which I figger we do, in your case.

You think that Highlands swindled you and I helped 'em do it.

I just do what I'm told, and '' --

`` You and I have a little talking to do, Jess.

`` So help me, Crouch, I'd like to kill you where you stand, but, before I do, I'm going to hear you admit killing him.

I don't mean to pry, but do they hide the swimsuit with the bubbles??

`` I really do have something important to tell you, Mr. Scott.

I could show what I can do ''.

As far as I was concerned, she had already and had dandily shown what she could do.

`` Only when I do it ''.

If it were not for an old professor who made me read the classics I would have been stymied on what to do, and now I understand why they are classics ; ;

Why she married him I do not know.

`` I know what we can do '', I said.

If I even hint at it do you think it will matter that you are his nephew -- and not even a blood nephew ''??

Often, I heard my uncles and cousins speak of it when I was a small boy growing up in Rabaul.

I expected Brassnose -- as a man with a strain of Melanesian in his blood -- to speak to them.

When Heidegger and Sartre speak of a contrast between being and existence, they may be right, I don't know, but their language is too philosophical for me.

If I am to speak the whole truth about my knowledge of love, I will have to stop trying to emulate the transcendant nightingale.

Whether you experienced the passion of desire I have, of course, no way of knowing, nor indeed have I wished with even the most fleeting fragment of a wish to know, for the fact that one constitutes by one's mere existence so to speak the proof of some sort of passion makes any speculation upon this part of one's parents' experience more immodest, more scandalizing, more deeply unwelcome than an obscenity from a stranger.

The innocence of which I speak is, I know, not incorruptible.

When I speak of how Shann felt, I know well.

The monk who opened the door immediately calmed his worries about his reception: `` I speak English '', the old man said, `` but I do not hear it very well ''.

At that time, he afforded me the courtesy of his busy workday for such length as I may need, to speak about my background, my hopes, my views on various national and local topics, and any problems that I may have been vexed with at the time.

I prefer to speak, however, of Sam Rayburn, the person, rather than Sam Rayburn, the American institution.

Again, I at first misconstrued this disconcertingly intense communication, and I quickly cast through my mind to account for her being able to speak, with such utter conviction, of an opinion held by my father, now several years deceased.

Other synonyms could of course serve the same function, and for the sake of ease I shall speak of kennings and epithets in the widest and loosest possible sense, and name, for example, Gar-Dene a kenning for the Danes.

I speak of `` the largest possible measure '' because any person who supposes that these conditions can be universally and perfectly achieved -- ever -- reckons without the inherent imperfectability of himself and his fellow human beings, and is therefore a dangerous man to have around.

Here I do not speak of military power where our advantage is obvious and overwhelming but of political power -- of influence, if you will -- about which the relevant questions are: Is Soviet influence throughout the world greater or less than it was ten years ago??

We have to tell ourselves that when Parker spoke in this vein, he believed what he said, because he could continue, `` But the truth, which cost me bitter tears to say, I must speak, though it cost other tears hotter than fire ''.

The next traditional step then was to accept it as the authoritative textbook of the Christian faith just as one would accept a treatise on any earthly `` science '', and I submitted to its conditions according to Christ's invitation and promise that, `` If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself '' ( John 7: 17 ).

At the last second I dropped my sights from the bare chest and bright red circle to the chest of his pony.

I would turn away from my writing in the hope of getting a good look at them but I never quite succeeded.

Now, here was something of obvious importance to me, yet when I reached for the tickets he snatched them away from my hand.

One afternoon, upon receiving permission and the necessary instructions from the clerk, I had visited the toilet adjoining the hall.

It was, I felt, possible that they were men who, having received no tickets for that day, had remained in the hall, to sleep perhaps, in the corners farthest removed from the counter with its overhead light.

No sooner would I turn my head away from the counter before he would address me, at times quite sharply, in order to bring back my attention.

And I had hardly finished my business in the toilet on the aforementioned occasion when the lights in that place, like the hall lights controlled from the switch in the office, flicked off and on impatiently.

I felt strongly attached to the hall, however, and hardly a day passed when I did not go to look at it from a distance.

I kept circling the block hoping to see, from the street behind it, the rear of the hall.

I've got to take Danny away from Clayton before I lose him altogether.

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 ''.

The way his red rubber lips were stretched across his pearly little teeth I thought he was only having a little joke, but, no, he wanted me to bend down from the roar of wind so he could roar something into my ear.

I saw Johnson's bottle snatched from his hand, saw it go in a swirl of foam just behind the second car.

She stood up, pulled the coat from her shoulders and started to slide it off, then let out a high-pitched scream and I let out a low-pitched, wobbling sound like a muffler blowing out.

I quit work at my usual hour as if this day was no different from other days.

Shortly before nine I drove my jalopy to the street facing the Lake and parked the car in shadows far enough away from the rendezvous corner but near enough to keep the corner in clear view.

I heard a cry from a stoker as a pillar of flame leaped from a hatch and tongued the man's bare back.

My friends and I come from a ship which was destroyed by fire.

But when it happens to you like that, I tell you, and you're a hundred feet from where you thought you were -- well, it makes you think.

I know this from my talks with him ''.

I write about Northern liberals from considerable personal experience.

The Australian stopped trying to talk a pidgin I could understand, and spoke strange words from deep in his chest.