"If her friends were there at this moment," the passage continues, "and asked her: 'What are you thinking about, Marie?', she couldn't answer, 'I am comparing the sound of my blood to insects' wings.'" This is a compelling moment of realisation in a fictional character, but also a moment when the membrane between creator and creation becomes permeable.
All across the country, people looked up Google: move to Scotland.'" The passage continues, but the first minister stopped precisely there: "I liked that bit particularly," she said.
As the passage continues, observe the growing specificity of Tolstoy's description, which gives it the texture of "reality," whether or not this "Oblonsky" corresponds to an actual flesh-and-blood person who once existed: He enjoyed his newspaper as he enjoyed his after-dinner cigar for the slight haze that it produced in his head.
"In the course of research," the passage continues, "I had found that, contrary to what he wrote, and contrary to his reputation as a hero, Sirica was in fact a corrupt, incompetent, and dishonest figure, with a close connection to Senator Joseph McCarthy and clear ties to organized crime.
And as the passage continues, he seems to echo Newton's suggestion that substances of different kinds might share place; although substances of the same kind exclude one another out of the same place, he writes, "these three sorts of substances, as we term them, do not exclude one another out of the same place".
"In short, there was no sympathy for humanity," the passage continues.
Here again the mystery of the passage continues: Muhammad sees not with his eyes, but rather with his heart (fu'ad).
Two verses later, the passage continues: "But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love" (American Standard Version).
Yet this witty passage continues into a different, larger atmosphere, and we sense that Fitzgerald will not be content to move merely in Waugh's wake: "All their pictures looked much the same.
Even though it was clear the passage continued in a certain direction, there was no way to move further in that area without destroying the cave's beauty.
