Jane

“I'm glad you like adverbs — I adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.”
― Henry James

“Why is it that you still beguile me –
As wind, stone, bird – and all the likes?
Why is that you smile on me –
With sudden summer lightning strikes?”
― Anna Akhmatova, White Flock

“Language is like poppies. It just takes something to churn the earth round them up, and when it does up come the sleeping words, bright red, fresh, blowing about.”
― Ali Smith, Autumn

“Usually, the murmur that rises up from Paris by day is the city talking; in the night it is the city breathing; but here it is the city singing. Listen, then, to this chorus of bell-towers - diffuse over the whole the murmur of half a million people - the eternal lament of the river - the endless sighing of the wind - the grave and distant quartet of the four forests placed upon the hills, in the distance, like immense organpipes - extinguish to a half light all in the central chime that would otherwise be too harsh or too shrill; and then say whetehr you know of anything in the world more rich, more joyous, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes - this furnace of music - these thousands of brazen voices, all singing together in flutes of stone three hundred feet high, than this city which is but one orchestra - this symphony which roars like a tempest.”
― Victor Hugo