Nathan Cull

“I considered ducking the appointment, but eventually decided to let the heart speak, and rolled up. I had, after all, spent three days wondering what it would be like to be married to her.
In fact, I'd thought about Annick so much that I couldn't remember what she looked like. It was like putting layer after layer of papier mâché over an object and gradually seeing the original shape disappear. How terrible if I failed to recognise the woman I'd already been married to for three days.”
― Julian Barnes, Metroland

“Sire, as between clothes and countenance, you are all right, there is no discrepancy. Your soldierly stride, your lordly port - these will not do. You stand too straight, your looks are too high, too confident. The cares of a kingdom do not stoop the shoulders, they do not droop the chin, they do not depress the high level of the eye-glance, they do not put doubt and fear in the heart and hang out the signs of them in slouching body and unsure step. It is the sordid cares of the lowly born that do these things. You must learn the trick; you must imitate the trademarks of poverty, misery, oppression, insult, and the other several and common inhumanities that sap the manliness out of a man and make him a loyal and proper and approved subject and a satisfaction to his masters, or the very infants will know you for better than your disguise, and we shall go to pieces at the first hut we stop at.”
― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

“I often wondered about Nigel, and why things seemed so much clearer to him. Was it more, or less, intelligence; more, or less, imagination; or simply a more stable personality?”
― Julian Barnes, Metroland

“The hardness in her eyes and face disturbed me. 'Why is she so cold?' I asked myself. 'Why?' Perhaps she sensed my anxiety, my hunger to communicate, because for an instant her expression softened, and she seemed to offer a bridge between us. But I felt that it was a temporary and fragile bridge swaying high above an abyss.”
― Ernesto Sábato, The Tunnel