James Joyce: Herring

“But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.”

“and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.”

“Her lips touched his brain as they touched his lips, as though they were a vehicle of some vague speech and between them he felt an unknown and timid preasure, darker than the swoon of sin, softer than sound or odor.”

“And if he had judged her harshly? If her life were a simple rosary of hours, her life simple and strange as a bird's life, gay in the morning, restless all day, tired at sundown? Her heart simple and willful as a bird's heart?”

“I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.”

“I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women.”

“She respected her husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office, as something large, secure and fixed: and though she knew the small number of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male.”

“She would follow, her dream of love, the dictates of her heart that told her he was her all in all, the only man in all the world for her for love was the master guide. Come what might she would be wild, untrammelled, free.”

“In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singtime sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven!”

“He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor hear her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.”

“For the years, he felt, had not quenched his soul, or hers.”

“In one letter that he had written to her then he had said: Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?”

“I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.”

“Frail the white rose and frail are
Her hands that gave”

“The sly reeds whisper to the night
A name — her name”

“And mine a shielded heart for her
Who gathers simples of the moon.”

“Can you nei do her, numb? asks Dolph, suspecting the answer know. Oikkont, ken you, ninny? asks Kev, expecting the answer guess.”

“She dealt with moral problems the way a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up her mind.”

“My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.”