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1 " Enchanted islands are hard to understand,' he said. 'I've always thought that. It worried me even as a child. The trouble is that you can never be sure where the enchantment begins and where it ends. "
― Robert Aickman , The Wine-Dark Sea
2 " No milk. It is black coffee, pure but strong, that fortifies against the powers of darkness with which the world is filled. "
3 " You speak English beautifully, which means you can't be English. "
4 " It is amazing how full a life a man can lead without for one moment being alive at all, except sometimes when sleeping. "
5 " Even the most normal people teeter all their lives along a narrow line between good and evil; between impulse and judgement, as we may say. Sleep does two things for the normal person. It gives him constant, long periods of respite from the conflict. It also enables his impulses to find a certain fulfilment in dreams, especially his most lawless impulses. "
6 " Margaret noticed that he was one of the many men who classify women into those you talk to and those with whom words merely impede the way. "
7 " It was still the long-drawn-out preliminary to a storm; the tedious, imperfect dispersal of the accumulated energy of the summer. "
8 " Things mechanical are like the ladies,’ continued Toby. ‘You need to understand their ways. If you understand them, they’ll do what you want from the start. If you don’t, they’ve got you. And then God help you. "
9 " Dreams, [...], are misleading, because they make life seem real. When it loses the support of dreams, life dissolves. "
10 " Those who deem this either weak of me or incredible are invited to find themselves in a like situation. "
11 " He supposed that the dream was fragile. If thought about to practically, if analyzed to closely, it might well cease to recur. The dream was probably best left in the back of the mind, at the edges of the mind; within that mental area which comes into its own between waking and sleeping- and, less happily, between sleeping and waking. "
12 " Margaret thought it was an exaggeration, but it was still odd that women were required to array themselves primarily as erotic objects, even on the most unsuitable occasions, even when they had passed forty, even when the last thing that men like Henry seemed to think of was eroticism, anyway where his wife was concerned. "
13 " Tourists were not to be comprehended among those strangers for whom, notoriously, the word is the same as for guests. "
14 " One had to dispel practicality. Then something else could be heard – if one was lucky, if the sun was shining, if the paths were well made, if one wore the right garments: and if one made no attempt at definition or popularisation. "
15 " I conned the musty stock. At the back of the shop . . . . glimmered the façade of an enormous dolls' house. I wanted it at once. "