...of a psychiatric hospital

I followed her down impeccable, silent, empty corridors, lit only by artificial overhead strip-lights, yellow, muted. There was no sound. The doors were all shut. The floor was expensive soft white lino and smelt strongly of bleach. There was one painting, a banal green landscape hung high up, out of easy reach. She opened a door marked Dr Pascale Vaury and indicated that I should enter before her.
Her office was terrifyingly clean, but had posters, a black leather couch shunted into a corner, a huge barred, vault-shaped window looking out on to a geometrical courtyard with long avenues of neatly pruned limes and impeccable white gravel paths. Through the thick lace curtains I saw passing strangers, some in religious habit, upright, marching briskly, others shuffling and bent, as if they were tortured, badly trimmed trees. The sun did not enter her office, but stopped short on the window sill, so that, outside, there was a glaze of bright light, inside, it was sober, muted, austere. The office was completely soundproofed. I could hear nothing but her movements and mine. She sat down on the other side of the desk and offered to speak English.

[Hallucinating Foucault, Duncker, P.]

...of lovers

Some lovers chat like old friends when they are making love, keep each other informed, as if they were engaged upon a common house purchase. For others making love is their language; their bodies articulate themselves into adjectives and verbs. For us it was the conjunction of the mind and opposition of the stars. She transformed me, wordlessly, into a mass of sensations, resolved me, like a symphony, into a crescendo of major chords. But she never told me how she felt, never counted the ways in which she loved me, nor did she ever ask my opinion or ever enquire after any of my desires. She watched herself, and me, from a terrible, uncompromising distance.

[Hallucinating Foucault, Duncker, P.]

...of a child's passing

I had two younger brothers; both had died. They'd also lived alone in a hotel for a while, like me. One of them died when he was two, the other at three. I can particularly recall the night when the second one died; he was a good-looking boy, big and blond.
My mother was standing up, at the foot of the bed, an old bed made of dark wood. She held a lit candle in her hand and was watching the dying child. I was sitting on the floor beside her, and I could see her exhausted face, lit from below by the candle's flame. The child had one or two little convulsions, looked up with a weary, astonished expression, and died. My mother didn't move; her hand covering the flame was the only thing that was obviously trembling. Finally, she noticed me and wanted to say something (undoubtedly something like 'Logna, death is part of nature') but she just clenched her lips sadly and said nothing. She placed the dead child on his pillow, took my hand and brought me to a neighbour's house. The silence, the darkness, and his pale face, his white night-shirt and long, fine blond hair, all this I remember as it were a bewildering dream. Soon afterwards, she also died.

[The Courilof Affair, Nemirovsky, I.]

...of a flunkey

You say there was another servant
Better if I hadn't mentioned him, not interesting and no more chatty than the others never a word from him either, we should have got on together after all working for the same folk eating together always run off our feet together, but no nothing it was as much as he could do not to tread on my corns and even if he had and knocked me about I think I'd rather have had that than the silence it's true, I wasn't made for a graveyard like that as a young man I was full of life didn't have to ask me twice to tell a good story I knew some I knew some, but now I can hardly remember any so you see the others didn't do me much good, the flunkey I used to call him the flunkey and that put him against me he'd keep his lips pursed in a vicious circle, for two pins I'd have had a word with my gentlemen but knowing them it wasn't worth it they would have sent me packing, besides they preferred the other chap always  fussing round them he's the one you ought to interrogate but where is he now, it's no wonder if he hasn't joined the other one a couple of blighters like that could be up to anything they ought to get on together, they got on well enough anyway nattering in corners and how could the flunkey have stayed on without someone to chat to, you need a make-up like mine to make-do with things as they were
What good would conversation have done you seeing you're deaf

[The Inquisitory, Pinget, R.]

...of reserve

Because for me to feel relaxed and reassured, I absolutely must find, no matter where... I feel this very clearly, but I don't know how to express it... the only words I have at my disposal being poor ones that are completely worn out from having been used by everybody for everything... I should need to possess the perfected vocabulary of those learned Doctors. I know they would think me ridiculous, if they heard me. Fortunately they never hear. So then... what I mean to say is that for me to feel contented and in a safe spot, like them, just anywhere... even in a vast fresco, why not? I have no prejudices... I must sense... I don't know quite well what it is... it's something like what you feel in the presence of the first blade of grass that timidly sends up a shoot... a crocus not yet open... it's that perfume they smell of, but it's not yet a perfume, not even an odour, it has no name, it's the odour of before odours... It seems to me that it's that... It's something that takes me gently and holds me without letting me go... something untouched, innocent... like a child's slender fingers clinging to me, a child's hand nestling in the hollow of my own. A confident ingenuousness spreads out everywhere inside me... every particle of me is imbued with it...
At all cost I want to show myself worthy of it... not betray you... that's what sometimes makes me feel I should like to forget all prudence and utter my appeal when I should not do so, when it would be better for you and for me to let people forget us... And The Golden Fruits? I feel like saying that... Do you remember it?... One only enters by the straight gate... Of what importance are those vessels and constructions with world dimensions if they don't contain still the closed crocus, the child's hand... Is it there or not? That's the entire question. Believe me, that's all that counts... How, I wonder, when the time comes for them too, today so powerful, to cling to people like me to make the long crossing, how will they go about it, by what will they catch hold of them... But I restrain myself. I remain silent. Ridicule would crush us. They use it so well. We are so frail and they so strong. Or perhaps, I feel that too, at times, perhaps, without realising it, I am certain that we, you and I, are the stronger, even now. Perhaps I feel a bit sorry for them... I don't know... Let us say quite simply, like anybody else, that it's out of politeness, delicacy of heart, that I remain silent. Therefore, I say nothing.

[The Golden Fruits, Sarraute, N.]

...of bated breath

Now they're all agog. He's not the only one. There are others who are hiding, sly recalcitrants, nostalgics... They're inspected, searched... that one over there, in that one, for some time now they had been sensing it, from that one who said nothing something emanated, they, those who happened to be near him, were more and more discommoded by it, their movements, as though the air about them had become thicker, had grown embarrassed, slower... that's where it came from, now they are sure: from those invisible emanations that, like a heavy gas, filtered from his silence.

[The Golden Fruits, Sarraute, N.]

...of the aloof

Not the slightest sign of acquiescence. His hand takes the postcard between fingertips and hands it on. Silence. Quite so. Silence. Not a word. He takes the reproduction and passes it around without saying a word. And what about it, I should like to know. What scornful reservations? What suppressed sneers? Careful, eh, you're not going to start up again? A perfectly ordinary man, you understand, a decent man, respectful of certain values, takes from your hand a Courbet reproduction which you hold out to him, gives it a glance... True, it was hardly a glance... Very well. Granted. He's probably familiar with it already. He's a very discerning man, a cultivated man. He says nothing. Silence gives consent. His silence shows respect. Modesty. He doesn't think that his opinion is important. He thinks it's not very interesting. That's all to his credit. He's a sincere man. A simple, frank man who dislikes empty phrases, affectation.
Simple. Modest. Frank. Deeply respectful. Silence gives consent. I quite agree. Well and good, I give in. Those were hallucinations. The dangerous signs of persecution mania. Even when it's plain to be seen, I give in. Even when it is so obvious that you'd like to scream, even when she leans over too far, as though she were bending under the weight of her admiration and starts cheeping, even when he looks at her, by all means, nothing took place between them, no secret sign between them to show their collusion, the immense aloofness they maintain and from where they see me, caught, entirely confined in their field of vision. No. They are right up against me. So close that they can have no general view, that's all they see, this close-up image of myself that I show them, this nice, frank, confident gaze that I lay, there, right on their eyes...

[The Golden Fruits, Sarraute, N.]