Sublime

Slender almost to the point of clinical intervention, she had a prominent forehead and surprised eyebrows and a tortoiseshell barrette and was, like Atwater, extremely earnest and serious at all times.

“I am the avenging sword of taste and decency,”

“Pauline had been writing me, sending cables, making sure I kept her in my sights.

But now, as I waited for Bostwick, the problem of writing was for me, as it had been for McGinniss in the early days of his encounter with MacDonald, like the problem of death: it did not interfere with the pleasures of the present.

Oh, Mother, if only you knew how cruelly I’ve been tricked by a conspiracy of sub-humans.

a personage whose refrigerator-like build, rubbery face, and heavy eyelids brought to mind some anthropomorphic piece of furniture in a Disney movie.

What she actually said was “You are living like someone who has died already.”

Stirring up trouble. Heedlessly throwing sparks. Mrs. Richardson seethed, and deep inside her, the hot speck of fury that had been carefully banked within her burst into flame.