"He liked words and images. "Blue" was one of his favorite words. He liked the feeling it made on his lips and tongue when he said it. Words have physical feeling, not just meaning, he remembered thinking when he was young. He liked other words, such as "distant,""woodsmoke,""highway,""ancient,""pass"
"He stepped from the truck and looked at her, looked closer, and then closer still. She was lovely, or had been at one time, or could be again."
"他下了车,望着她,近些,更近些。她风姿绰约,或者曾经一度如此,或者可能再度如此。"
"Franccesca said nothing, wondering about a man to whom the difference betweeen a pasture and a meadow seemed important, who got excited about sky color, who wrote a little poetry but not much fiction. Who played the guitar, who earned his living by images and carried his tools in knapsacks. Who seem"
"God, what was it about him! He was like some star creature who had drafted in on the tail of a comet and dropped off at the end of her land."
"[when F came downstairs in her light pink dress] "Jesus," he said softly. All of the feelings, all of the searching and reflecting, a lifetime of feeling and searching and reflecting, came together at that moment."
"With her face buried in his neck and her skin against his, she should smell rivers and woodsmoke, could hear steaming trains chuffing out of winter stations in long-ago nighttimes, could see travelers in black robes moving steadily along frozen rivers and through summer meadows, beating their way to"