"What's that?' Thaniel said, curious. The postmarks and stamps weren't English or Japanese.'A painting. There's a depressed Dutchman who does countryside scenes and flowers and things. It's ugly, but I..."
- Natasha Pulley
"Mori made an unwilling sound. 'I don't like Western art.''No look at this.' He lifted it from its package. It wasn't heavy. 'It's clever, it looks like busy Mozart.''What?''I . . .' Thaniel sighed. 'I..."
"I'm a Buddhist. You might have a Christian obligation to catch pneumonia while you sit for two and a half hours listening to some twerp in a dress drone on about the virtue of wedded life but, dear as..."
"Six saw a caterpillar.''What kind?''Green, with purple and white zigzags.''I see,' Thaniel said slowly. Liking children did not keep him from being perplexed by them. He was recently too old to rememb..."
"The creeping sense that he might have seen him reading the book came up from the ground, but that was more anxiety than evidence."
"Mori looked across and was, briefly, a languageless, inhuman thing rescued from the sea and asked for an impious favour."
"It is not summer, England doesn't have summer, it has continuous autumn with a fortnight's variation here and there."