Brilliant Prose

The Sea’s Allure / Joseph Conrad

The sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the […]

A Finger on the Trigger / V. S. Naipaul

A Finger on the Trigger / V. S. Naipaul

  I was entranced the first time I looked down a gun-sight with a finger on the trigger. It seemed to me the most private, the most intense moment of conversation with oneself, so to speak, with that split-second of right decision coming and going all the time, almost answering the movements of one’s mind. […]